Preamble

The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS

[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]

PETITION

Education Cuts

Mr. Harry Barnes: On Wednesday, thousands of people came here from Derbyshire to lobby against the education cuts, exercising their democratic right to lobby. They handed in petitions and gave me other material; for example, yesterday I sent 800 letters to the Secretary of State for Education about the education cuts.
There are 13,207 signatures on the petition. Some of them lap over into the constituency of Bolsover, because North-East Derbyshire district covers part of that constituency. However, there must be at least 12,000 signatures from my constituency, representing well over 15 per cent. of the constituency population.
The petition reads:
To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled. The humble Petition of the residents of Derbyshire sheweth that
Government policies threaten standards of education in all Derbyshire schools and that this can only lead to increased class sizes, fewer text books and other resources; plus teacher and staff support redundancies. These policies will also seriously and adversely affect education opportunities of existing and future pupils. We support the campaign to call upon the Secretary of State to address this matter urgently.
Wherefore your petitioners pray that your Honourable House will urge the Prime Minister and his Government not to impede this Petition.
And your petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, etc.
The petition is signed by Steven O'Brien of 68 Springvale road, Danesmoor and the other petitioners whom I mentioned earlier.

To lie upon the Table.

Proceeds of Crime Bill

As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered.

New clause 1

DESIGNATION OF OFFENCES IN RESPECT OF WHICH MAGISTRATES' COURTS MAY MAKE CONFISCATION ORDERS

'Schedule 4 to the 1988 Act (Offences in respect of which magistrates' courts may make confiscation orders) shall be amended by inserting at the end of Part I—

"and insofar as they are tried summarily:


Enactment
Description of Offence


Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 (c. 48)



Sections 107
offences relating to the infringement of copyright


Section 198
making, dealing with or using illicit recordings


Trade Descriptions Act 1968 (c. 29) Section 1
offences relating to false trade descriptions


Trade Marks Act 1994 (c. 26) Section 92
offences relating to the unauthorised use of trade marks etc.".'.



—[Mr. John Greenway]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. John Greenway: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
There has been much talk in the news this week about the film industry. Indeed, during recent months there has been a great movement towards supporting the British film industry with funding from, perhaps, the national lottery. That has certainly been very much in the minds of many hon. Members. Today, I believe that we could take steps significantly to help the British film industry by adding my new clause to the Bill. It deals with the growing problem of the counterfeiting of videos, films and, as I shall show, many other items of intellectual property.
The new clause would make counterfeiting and copyright infringement, under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, the Trade Description Act 1968 and the Trade Marks Act 1994, offences that courts could take into account when making confiscation orders under the Bill and under the Criminal Justice Act 1988. The offences would be added to schedule 4 of the 1988 Act.
My hon. Friend the Minister has been extremely helpful when considering this matter, as has been my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam). However, my hon. Friend the Minister will doubtless say that my aim could be achieved not by adding my new clause to the Bill, but by statutory instrument. As I understand the position, part I of schedule 4 to the 1988 Act lists all the relevant Acts and the offences to which that Act applies. Part II says that the list can be amended by statutory instrument. Is that the best route or should we add the new clause to the Bill? As I understand it, if we add the new clause to the Bill, all the offences could be dealt with by any magistrates court or Crown court, but if we deal with them through a statutory instrument under part II of schedule 4 to the 1988 Act, offences could be dealt with only in a magistrates court. That is the advice that I have


been given. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister and others who may be listening to the debate will want to reflect on that point.
Piracy of videos, music cassettes and compact discs is a growing problem in the United Kingdom. The Federation Against Copyright Theft—FACT—and the British Phonographic Industry estimate that, every year, the cost in lost sales to their industries amounts to £250 million and £20 million respectively—a staggering amount of money.
It is widely recognised that, when bootleggers are caught, the punishments do not fit the crimes. The fine is often £100 and can be as little as £20 for a first offence. Video piracy is a low-risk, high-reward business. Approximately 20 per cent. of the illicit material that is seized in raids conducted by FACT consist of videos that have not received a certificate from the British Board of Film Classification because they are deemed unsuitable for home viewing. Those videos include two films in particular—"The Exorcist" and "Driller Killer". That is another feature of the sorry tale with which we must deal. Such films are unsuitable for home viewing and they are available at car boot sales and Sunday markets. I suspect that no one is choosing who should be allowed to buy those videos.
The scale of the operation is mind boggling. From various raids that FACT has undertaken with the police, the industry has discovered that, for a typical counterfeit operation, 100 duplicating machines might be working 24 hours a day, producing 6,000 videos a week, from which the revenue amounts to about £60,000, or £3 million per annum. When that information was first presented to me, I misread it. I thought that about 100 video machines were being used to duplicate videos around the country, so we were talking about 6,000 videos a week and £3 million worth of counterfeit goods nationally. I thought, "What is the problem" until it came home to me that those figures related to one operation.
I do not wish to fall foul of the rules of the House, but I want to show you, Madam Speaker, this photograph of a raid in Kent, which my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) attended with Kent police. You can see all the machines. Another photograph shows all the counterfeit video covers. Another one shows a garage and boxes full of all the copies ready to be shipped out to the Sunday market. There are more pictures of the video machines. They were part of just one counterfeiting operation. Those photographs show the scale of the problem.

Lady Olga Maitland: We are suitably horrified by what my hon. Friend has shown us. He told us about one operation, but has he any idea how many other operations of a similar nature are going on around the country? Can he give a guesstimate?

Mr. Greenway: I shall make a guesstimate later, but, if I do not stick to the order in which I want to present all the facts, I might miss something out and there is much important information. I share my hon. Friend's concern. She is right to point to the fact that such activities are taking place on a wide scale.
9.45 am
Another factor causes grave concern. I want to dispel the myth we are dealing only with a few out-of-work young lads operating in what we might call the Del Boy

economy around London or in some of our inner cities, and that they are doing nobody much harm by making a few bob on the side pirating the odd video or cassette. It is well known that such operations have strong links with organised crime, especially pornography, drug rackets and even terrorist activity. They all have proven links with video piracy.
Last night, I was speaking to my right hon. Friend the Member for Westminster, North (Sir J. Wheeler) about that matter. You will recall, Madam Speaker, those halcyon days of the Select Committee on Home Affairs when my right hon. Friend was the chairman, and how we discovered, for example, on our visits to Northern Ireland, how such operations were helping to fund IRA terrorist activity. I pay tribute, in particular, to the tremendous work that the Royal Ulster Constabulary has undertaken in trying to stop those rackets and the proceeds of crime going towards terrorist activities.
Where does one obtain pirate videos and material? Sometimes, one can pick them up in retail outlets because dealers are tempted by the low prices, but the majority of pirated or counterfeit videos are sold to the public through the non-retail trade, especially car boot sales and Sunday markets. It is just a little aside, but that is an another example of why we need—and I say this passionately to my hon. Friend the Minister, who I know shares my concern—to reconsider the law on car boot sales and some Sunday markets. I hope that we will be able to return to that matter before the year is out.

Mr. Gary Streeter: Does my hon. Friend agree that some of the confiscated proceeds of crime that he has mentioned could be put towards more stringent criminal enforcement so that we could crack down on Sunday markets and car boot sales and nip such crime in the bud?

Mr. Greenway: My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Whether there should be some hypothecation—if that is the right word—of where the proceeds of crime go is a more general matter for the Bill.
Again, I am delighted that you are in the Chair this morning, Madam Speaker, because you were with us in Washington when we were shown the 12-seater tourer bus that had been seized by the Washington drugs squad from drug traffickers, and how it used the bus in its campaign against other drug traffickers. I know that such solutions do not go down well with Home Department officials, but it is a tempting thought that we should be able to use such equipment and especially, as my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Streeter) said, some of the proceeds to help crack down on crime. I hope that, when the Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) has introduced is put on the statute book, and when confiscation of the proceeds of crime significantly increases, that will help my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary in fighting the Treasury over his budget to cut crime. That is an important matter.
I deal now with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland). She asked how big the problem was. In 1994, the Federation Against Copyright Theft seized 1,020 video recorders, 156,500 tapes, 500,000 inlays and 61 television sets in 1,747 searches. Inlays are vital because they are the picture sleeves that make the buyer think how terrific it is that he can buy a copy of "The Exorcist", "I Spit in your Groove" or "Driller Killer". When one thinks that not all


searches are successful because the counterfeiters get to know that the police or the federation are coming and shift their stock accordingly, one gets some idea of the scale of the problem.
The federation works closely with the police and trading standards officers and institutes about 150 criminal actions a year at its own expense. The majority of these actions are undertaken by way of a summons under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.
It is FACT's experience that penalties in the Crown court average about £1,000 a summons, although the maximum penalties available under the Act are unlimited fines and/or two years' imprisonment. Under the Video Recordings Act 1984, the maximum fine available is £20,000. These sums must be viewed as derisory when compared with the value of infringing material that may be seized during a raid because it is not uncommon for that material to be worth more than £1 million.
What is the point even of a maximum fine of £20,000 if the counterfeiters have made £1 million from their operation? They pay the £20,000 and then go and start all over again. We have to seize the £1 million, which is why it is right that this matter is being discussed in connection with this worthy Bill.
The federation, trading standards officers and local Members of Parliament are all constantly applying pressure on the judiciary to enforce the maximum penalties available to make their efforts more effective in combating video piracy, but the fact is that even the maximum penalties are not enough—we have to get after the loot.
The British Video Association and the British Phonographic Industry, which deals with the record business, strongly support the Bill and especially the new clause which would certainly make the Bill more applicable to the bootleggers and the pirates who damage their industry. The BPI is the trade association that represents the majority of United Kingdom record companies whose recordings are widely pirated. It estimates that piracy costs the United Kingdom record industry about £20 million a year. The BPI is active in fighting such piracy and took more than 900 actions against pirates last year.
Whereas a dozen or perhaps 20 films are extremely popular at any one time—of course, they have been financed by the film industry, which is a big business—there are many hundreds, if not thousands, of recordings available on the high street, but a great many copies are not necessarily sold. We should think of the musicians, some of whom are barely scratching a living or trying to make a future in the industry, whether in popular music or in performing the classical repertoire which, I have to say, is more to my taste. The pirating of copies is a serious problem for them.
What I am saying, in effect, is that this is not a victimless crime as some people suggest. The victims are often young musicians who are trying to make a career and for whom the royalties from the proper sale of recordings are so important.

Mr. Oliver Heald: Does my hon. Friend agree that record and film companies spend part of their profits on encouraging young talent and enabling people to make their mark in those industries?

If those profits are reduced because of pirate copies of recordings, might it not mean that opportunities for young talent could be diminished?

Mr. Greenway: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, but, in fact, it is worse than that. The extent of pirating and counterfeiting might make record companies decide that it is not worth making certain records in the first place. This is, I understand, a particular problem in some categories of popular music. I do not know enough about it to say which categories, but I understand that some are of very narrow interest. I suspect that the people who might like to listen to such music—those in the 18–30 age group—frequent Sunday markets and car boot sales.
I shall now detail what happened when a major bootlegger was prosecuted. I am told by the BPI that one of the major known criminals working in this area pleaded not guilty when tried in a magistrates court but was found guilty and given a 12-month suspended sentence for two years. The counterfeit stock in his possession at the time of his arrest was forfeited, which is fair enough, but he was not fined. He was simply ordered to pay £500 towards legal costs, despite the fact that a conservative estimate of his annual turnover was in excess of £500,000.
The man had been dealing in bootleg product for a number of years, and it has recently come to the attention of the BPI—I am grateful to Sarah John, its director of legal affairs, for giving me this information—that this character is now back in business. That is the heart of the problem. If the courts had the powers to confiscate what they estimate to be the proceeds of crime as set out in the Bill, it would have been much more difficult for that person to have got off so lightly.
I must explain that this problem does not apply only to the film and music industries. This week, I had a letter from Gillette Management Inc. which reads as follows:
I am writing to confirm that, as a major UK manufacturer of consumer products, Gillette fully supports
the new clause which, it says, will help it enormously in combating counterfeiting. It continues:
As a leading UK manufacturer of shaving products (through its operating subsidiary, Gillette UK Limited with factories in Isleworth and Reading) and writing instruments (through its operating subsidiary, Parker Pen Company with a factory in Newhaven), Gillette has suffered frequently in the past from the importation of counterfeit products into this country. Counterfeiting has the effect of seriously undermining our UK manufacturing base and any strengthening of the law … which increases the penalties for counterfeiting and discourages the import of counterfeit products, is to be encouraged and has the full support of The Gillette Company.
When one thinks of the areas in which Gillette and Parker Pen operate, one can immediately see that such behaviour must apply right across the board. Throughout the entire commercial and industrial life of this country, people are counterfeiting products or pirating products before they are released. I understand that not long ago there was a scam about ladies' perfume. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam and the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche) will no doubt be able to tell us a little more about that when they speak. The case for action is abundantly clear.
10 am
I shall mention two other important features which are a cause of grave concern. If I deal with the less serious issue first, it will whet the appetite of the House for the second point, which is infinitely worse. The lesser case


gives a clear indication of the sort of people with which we are dealing and, as I have already mentioned, the contact that they have with organised crime. The premises of the Federation Against Copyright Theft, FACT, in Middlesex were recently fire-bombed and it is constantly being threatened by some bootleggers.
The second matter of grave concern arises because of information supplied by my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North. I pay tribute to him for the way in which he has brought the matter to our attention. Indeed, he apologises to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for being unable to attend today's debate. My hon. Friend tells me that bootleggers often copy over violent and pornographic films, which they will then sell to anyone with cash. Just imagine a two or three-hour video of a pornographic film, on which 1 hour 40 minutes of "The Lion King" was recorded, that a video sleeve of "The Lion King" was put on the box and that it was sold at a Sunday market for a fiver to some kid who had just been paid for his paper round. He would take the video home, pop it in the machine and 1 hour 40 minutes later, when "The Lion King" finished, he would be watching the most horrendous pornography and bestiality.
Were he present, my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North would tell the House that he had seen this material with his own eyes as a result of a raid. While we in the House may plead on behalf of British business, British commerce, film makers and musicians who are losing out to pirates and bootleggers, such irresponsibility in the distribution of filth which youngsters may see is the most overwhelming reason why we need to take action.
The House has a chance this morning to put the matter right, to say to the pirates and the bootleggers that the final curtain is coming down, the videos are being switched off, it is the end of the show and that we shall take away their money and ensure that their dreadful business is brought to a sudden end.

Mrs. Barbara Roche: At the beginning of his speech, the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) said that we were discussing the new clause at a particularly appropriate time in the film world. I think that he was referring to this week's Oscar ceremony. Perhaps I may take this opportunity to mention that in my constituency we have a British Oscar winner, Peter Capaldi, who has also made a great contribution to our life locally. He has accompanied me to a local school where he encouraged young people to consider the possibility of a life in acting, film and theatre. I pay tribute to his tremendous achievement and to that of all our British Oscar winners. They deserve our congratulations.
I very much welcome the manner in which the hon. Member for Ryedale introduced this most important subject. There is no doubt that the illegal bootlegging industry is causing a tremendous problem and is making a huge amount of money. I shall pursue a number of the points that the hon. Gentleman raised. When he spoke of some of the videos that have been seized, he said they were unsuitable for home viewing and mentioned some of the work in which the Select Committee on Home Affairs had been involved—some of it when you, Madam Deputy Speaker, were a member of that Committee. I was also a member of the Committee, although, sadly, not at the same time as yourself.
I was reminded of some of the related inquiries that the Select Committee made into the link between video violence and juvenile crime and also—it is closely related because it sometimes involves the same individuals who are definitely involved in organised crime—into computer pornography. The hon. Member for Ryedale gave the graphic example of events in Washington and some of the sophisticated proceeds of crime that the industry has wrought.
I shall take this opportunity gently to remind hon. Members and the Minister that one of the amendments tabled by the Opposition to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill—in fact, I tabled it—related to confiscation and forfeiture with regard to computer pornography. It would have facilitated the confiscation, when convictions were made, of the very computers used by criminals to make their appalling computer videos and images. The amendment would have donated that sophisticated equipment to the police, who frequently—I have heard this from senior police officers—have to use equipment which is not as sophisticated as that of the criminals that they are rightly pursuing. I hope that Minister will again consider our plea and not reject it as, sadly, he did during the passage of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Bill.
The hon. Member for Ryedale was right to talk about some of the discrepancies. The maximum fine under the Video Recordings Act 1994 is £20,000, which is a derisory sum when one considers that £1 million worth of products may be seized during a raid. That is why we should use our best endeavours to stop such activity. The hon. Gentleman was also right to mention the effect on business and, sometimes, on children as a result of this trade.
I understand that the Minister may suggest that the Bill does not the need the new clause to enable the pursuance of this illegal activity and that we may approach the problem through another means, perhaps by statutory instrument. I shall certainly listen to that very carefully. I shall also be interested to hear the comments of the hon. Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam), the promoter of the Bill. Clearly there is cross-party support for the fact that something has to be done about this deplorable trade. At this stage, we must probe and pursue the question of what is the best method. We and, I am sure, the hon. Member for Ryedale would need strong assurances from the Minister that there was a way in which to achieve our aim if he did not accept the new clause. We shall listen carefully to what the Minister and the hon. Member for Exeter have to say.

Mr. Streeter: I welcome the opportunity to make a few comments on this important new clause. The House owes my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) a debt of gratitude for tabling it. He described graphically the Del Boy economy. I am tempted to say, therefore, that only fools and horses would vote against the new clause, but I shall resist that temptation.
The important message that we must send out from the House this morning, especially to young people, is that crime must not pay. Too many young people believe that crime does pay. The Bill, on which I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam), is sending a clear message that we will hit criminals where it really hurts—in their pockets—by confiscating the proceeds of their crimes.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale described the losses of more than £250 million per annum to the huge film and recording industry. He is right to table the new


clause in an attempt to deal with the perpetrators of these crimes. I take the point that the money would be spent, at least in part, by the film and recording industry on encouraging young talent to come forward and on encouraging the creative people in our midst. How much better it would be for the money to be spent on them rather than on the life-style criminals who cock a snook at the system and perpetrate those offences.
I want now to develop the point which I made in an intervention about the way in which we could use the money that we confiscated from those who commit offences. There is a powerful argument for ensuring that the proceeds confiscated are used in law enforcement. That is an especially powerful argument because we recognise that the outlets for pirate videos and pirate recordings of all kinds are car boot sales, Sunday markets, and so on. It is difficult to police such outlets because they are so widespread.
There has been a great explosion of car boot sales in all our constituencies. On Sunday mornings, it is difficult to drive along certain roads because there are so many cars parked. Understandably, people enjoy the opportunity to buy a bargain; no one begrudges people obtaining a bargain. These markets are difficult to police because there are so many of them. Would it, therefore, be appropriate to ensure that the cash that may be taken from these criminals under the powers in new clause 1 is used to ensure that more officers are made available to go around the markets and car boot sales so that they can confiscate some of the pirate material and trace it back to source?
We cannot blame ordinary members of the public for purchasing this material and for trying to buy a bargain. My hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale made the point that many purchasers are young people. My own children enjoy going with their hard-earned pocket money to Plympton market and to the car boot sale on Peacock meadow in Plympton. They sometimes come back with videos and recordings which they have bought for a few pounds. They do not know whether those purchases are pirate recordings. We cannot blame young people. We must apprehend at source those who sell these items and we must trace them back to those who are creating them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale gave graphic illustrations of the dens of iniquity which produce the recordings. He described the racks of video recorders and copying machines. Once access is gained to the garages, basements and cellars where the machines are kept, there can be no argument about what the machines are used for. The difficult point is locating them in the first place. Here again, there is a powerful argument for more resources being made available so that we can track down these places of subterfuge—the underground recording studios.
I hope that we can think seriously about ensuring that the confiscated proceeds are used for further and better law enforcement. I recognise that some will squeal that we are hitting people too hard through the Bill. They will say that the families of criminals will suffer. I believe that we can judge whether we are getting our law enforcement measures right by the amount of squealing from the libertarians. Unless the libertarians and the wishy-washy do-gooders are squealing and protesting, we have not gone far enough. That is one of the ways in which we can judge a measure. I am delighted to hear that one or two people are beginning to voice their concerns about the Bill. If we do not yet hear the usual cacophony of noise

from the wishy-washy do-gooders, we may not have gone far enough. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter will consider that point.
I am keen to ensure that the confiscated proceeds of crime are used to crack down on crime; the money should be used for law enforcement. I hope that we see an end to the despicable trade which my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale described so graphically. I am concerned about the fact that people record over existing porn videos. A few weeks ago, there were cases in the newspapers of families whose children were watching videos, only to see at the end some disgraceful material, which had no doubt come in from the continent. We do not want that to happen. I believe that the House will get behind the new clause as it has got behind the Bill.

Mr. John Greenway: My hon. Friend has reminded me, with his reference to the fact that the original videos may come from the continent, of a point that I did not make earlier. Some people may wonder why people copy on to pornographic videos. As I understand it, it is cheaper to buy the pornographic videos than to buy blank video cassettes. The quantities are so great that the pirate operators can pick them up for almost nothing. Alternatively, there is no market in which the porn videos can be got rid of.

Mr. Streeter: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. It may be a reflection on the value of the material recorded on the cassettes that it makes them worth less than new, empty cassettes. My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. I am grateful to him for the new clause. It has my full support and, I am sure, the support of the House generally.

Mr. Piers Merchant: The wishy-washies, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Streeter), seem to be coming on to our side. I understand that one of the original suggestions for confiscation came from the Howard League for Penal Reform.
I strongly support the new clause. I listened to the debate on Second Reading with great interest. In retrospect, I am surprised to discover that the categories included in the new clause were not included in the original Bill. We may hear later whether there was a good reason for that.
Crime must not pay in any circumstances and crime must be seen not to pay. The idea that we can continue to read stories about criminals disappearing and going to live the high life on the Costa or in even more exotic places is unacceptable, not just in itself but because of the appalling example it sets which gives the impression that crime can pay.
The hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) made points on Second Reading about the professionalism of crime today and the extent to which money can be made. The areas covered by the new clause are those in which a large amount of money can be made—what might be called business-style crime which the Bill aims to restrict. It is a sort of white-collar crime—or, more accurately, grey-collar crime, because of the shady characters and racketeers involved, who use pseudo-business techniques but deliberately stray on to the wrong side of the law.
Crimes such as those covered by the new clause are, or should be, at the centre of the Bill. That is because copyright crimes of all varieties are often closely linked with more mainline crime—crimes of violence, gangsterism, syndicates and international crime such as money laundering. They are all interconnected, and it would be fatal to imagine that copyright crime is somehow set apart from the rest and is not so bad, or that it is merely carried out by a few men straying into unacceptable business practices. It is far more than that. There is a seamless link between all those forms of crime.
Indeed, it could be said that copyright crime is more heinous in its effect and in its links with the worst forms of crime than the old-fashioned idea of the safe blower, or even street crime, which is often isolated from the huge sums of money connected with international crime syndicates such as the Mafia. The crimes that we are discussing are certainly not like that.
Many people who go to a market or buy a video from under a service station counter—that is another way in which counterfeit videos are often sold—might think that they are doing no more than involving themselves with the output of a form of minor crime. They may have in their minds a picture of some fellow with a video recorder who has bought another, linked them together and copied a film from one to the other. They assume that there has been only a minor technical breach of the law, involving only small amounts of cash.
If someone thinks that, he has not looked deeply into the "business" practices behind such crime. Huge distribution networks are often built up and massive amounts of money are involved. My hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) mentioned the sum of £250 million, and even that is an estimate; there could be even more money involved in such improper activity.
It is easy for a small group of people to set up a bank of video recorders, and one does not have to use one's imagination to work out where many of the recorders may have come from. They then link them together and start reproducing videos at a phenomenal rate. The machines run automatically and can be left to run for 24 hours a day. The raw material—the second-hand videos on which the counterfeit material is recorded—is also easy and cheap to get hold of. The challenge is not the technical side, though to some people that may seem the difficult part, but the distribution, and we have heard examples of how easy that is, too. There are massive profits to be made from counterfeiting. If the Bill does not thoroughly ensure that those profits are liable to confiscation, there will be a gaping hole in it.
I want also to draw the attention of the House to software counterfeiting. I am not an expert in copyright law, and I am not sure whether the statutes specified by the new clause catch software counterfeiting. I hope that they do. If it is not covered, it should be brought within the Bill in one way or another, for the simple reason that it is even easier than video counterfeiting. It is far quicker to copy a programme from a computer or a disk on to another disk. That can be done in a matter of seconds, or at least minutes, and it can also be done imperceptibly.
When one video is copied on to another, there is bound to be some loss of quality, unless one has access to a digital machine, and those are hardly available today. The more one copies, and the further the generation of copy,

the lower the quality is; with software, there is no loss of quality whatever, so, for forgers and counterfeiters, it presents an even more attractive possibility. It is easier, cheaper and quicker and one can go on doing it for ever.
There is not yet as big a market for software as for counterfeit videos, but potentially the market is much bigger. There are means of distribution that can even do away with the need to market a physical product. Material can be sold down telephone lines—downline, as it is called. That sphere of activity must be brought firmly and definitely within the scope of the Bill.
Finally, there is the illicit use of trademarks. All hon. Members must know that it is easy to buy counterfeits of expensive jewellery and watches—the name Cartier comes to mind, and I mentioned that a few weeks ago in another debate. In the far east, one can walk into virtually any watch shop and buy for less than £20 a perfect replica of a Cartier watch, the original of which would cost £7,000 to £8,000.
There is a whole industry in the far east producing such material, and I do not doubt that there is probably a whole industry in this country too, if it could be found. The products are counterfeit—beautifully done, but illegal. There are huge profits to be made there, too. It is a matter of considerable concern to proper manufacturers. A few months ago, I saw a wonderful photograph of a steamroller running over a massive mountain of confiscated fake Cartier watches. The thought of all those beautiful watches being squashed under those huge wheels was rather frightening, until one realised that luckily they were not genuine.
That mountain was only the tip of the iceberg—if I may mix my metaphors. It is vital that no holds are barred in the battle against such crime, for crime is what it is. A huge industry would receive a hammer blow if it were absolutely clear that counterfeiters and others responsible for the crime would have their assets confiscated so that, at the end of the day, there was no profit in it.
The new clause will toughen a law that, rightly, is tough anyway, and will strengthen its purpose. It will inflict another hard blow on the criminals who profit by breaking the law at the expense of others. For my constituents and for me, that blow cannot be hard enough.

Mr. Heald: I am glad to have the opportunity to make one or two remarks on this important new clause. My hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) made an important point when he said that people often think of bootlegging and similar offences in the recording industry as a Del Boy crime—something reasonably comfortable, but the sort of offence that falls into the category of "something that fell off the back of a lorry".

Mr. Alan Duncan: Like a Labour party policy.

Mr. Heald: Yes, or perhaps like some of the more Gump-like remarks made by the people on the Opposition Front Bench.
There is more to the crime than that, because bootlegging is stealing from our most important industries. It is also stealing from the people who benefit from the profits of those industries and from the consumer. Since the 1960s, popular music has probably been one of the most successful British industries—[Interruption.] One of my hon. Friends is muttering that


he would not listen to all of it, but groups such as the Beatles, and now Take That, are well-known popular music artistes—[HON. MEMBERS: "Trendy."]

Mr. Streeter: Or the Bay City Rollers.

Mr. Heald: I think that the Bay City Rollers are a bit passé. Those groups have done tremendously well for Britain, which has gained thousands of jobs and great credit from the music industry.
In the film industry, we may only have occasional winners, but what good films they are, such as "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and "Chariots of Fire".

Mrs. Roche: The hon. Gentleman points to some of the wonderful achievements of the British film industry. Does he agree that it is disgraceful that the Government have not given the industry much more support? If the Government listened to the British film industry—

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. I suggest that the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, North (Mr. Heald) does not follow the hon. Lady down that road, as it is very wide of the new clause we are debating.

Mr. Heald: I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for not allowing me to be tempted down that route.
People may wonder why Conservatives are making such a fuss about bootlegging. Although the Conservative party is the party of freedom, free expression and freedom of trade—it is also the party of freedom from high taxes, which may explain the point made by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche)—it has always been the party of freedom under the law, and that is pertinent to the new clause.

Mr. John Greenway: If bootlegging and piracy were stopped, the film industry would be financially secure, and the question of Government support would not arise.

Mr. Heald: That is an extremely good point. It is not just the industry and the performers who benefit if profits are left in the company, but the consumer. The effect of taking all that money out of the record and film industries must be that the prices of videos and recordings are unnecessarily high. Everyone suffers from bootlegging.
There are many young artists in all fields who may be waiting for a talent scout to find them, but the record industry may not be able to afford pay for talent scouts. If the industry cannot pay for training, recording, making samples, quality assurance, marketing, and having the best producers in Britain, the country, British trade, businesses, individuals and consumers suffer.
Bootlegging is one of the worst offences in a way, because it not only undermines something which is extremely good in Britain but permeates our society when people start to talk about it in Del Boy terms. It is corrupting to think that that sort of theft—which is stealing from all of us—is acceptable, and it is time to put a stop to it.
Part of the concept behind the Bill is that if a person continues to commit offences, the law will come down on him like a ton of bricks. In America, that is described as "three strikes and you're out", and the same principle

must apply here. It must be right for life-style criminals who continue to offend and damage Britain are hit, and hit hard. I welcome the new clause, as it is doing something extremely important to protect us all.

Lady Olga Maitland: First, may I give a warm welcome to the introduction of the Bill as a whole? I was delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) decided to choose the Proceeds of Crime Bill as his private Member's Bill. This is the first opportunity that I have had to make remarks on the Bill. This country is crying out for something to be done about criminals who are living off the fat of their proceeds—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady, but her remarks may be anticipating the Third Reading of the Bill. We are looking at one simple new clause.

Lady Olga Maitland: I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for your remarks, but I felt that it was essential to point out the broad picture before moving on to specific points—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I have specifically told the hon. Lady that that is not acceptable.

Lady Olga Maitland: I stand corrected. The new clause is welcome and important. All of us are proud of the British film industry, and also of the music industry which has produced excellent classical and popular work and we will not stand to see those valuable industries undermined by crime.
I have had some personal experience of the availability of counterfeit videos. Before Christmas, my 13-year-old son decided to go to Camden market to trawl for Christmas presents. On a stall at the market he found an array of videos, including—for £5—"Four Weddings and a Funeral". He brought it home, and was pleased as punch—so pleased that he decided to go back the next day to get some more copies. The stallholder had bunked off with the profits, but other stallholders were around. He bought more copies, wrapped them up and gave them as Christmas presents.
We watched one of the videos. I suspected that it had been suspiciously cheap, but how was a young child or any purchaser to know of the source of the video? When the picture came up on the screen, it was clear that it was not a first-class, first-print video. The opening shots were rather awkwardly presented, and there were black margins on the screen before the film finally got into full cry. It was clear that we had been cheated and conned. There is no way in which a customer can get compensation after being diddled in that way.
I was lucky that my son was not distracted by another kind of video that he could have bought. The availability of pornography is terrifying, and it corrupts everybody—not necessarily the young. We do not need it in our society, and I wish that there was some way in which we could stop it. We did manage to put a stop to pornography coming over the television airwaves through the control of the Red Dutch television programme—

Mr. Duncan: Red Hot Dutch.

Lady Olga Maitland: Red Hot Dutch. None the less, it is not just pornography that I am concerned about. I am also concerned about the spread of counterfeit


videos which promote violence. These cheap and violent videos are extremely damaging to our society. They have a particularly damaging effect on emotionally vulnerable people who may be easily disturbed. In the end, society pays a heavy price as such a person could lose control.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) on giving a graphic description of how counterfeit videos are produced. I had been aware of the method following discussions with police, but his remarks were a salutary lesson in the ease with which counterfeits can be produced and the amount of profit involved. To think that one producer alone can make £3 million out of one lock-up garage is terrifying. It is impossible to estimate the full scale of the industry in the United Kingdom—it is beyond belief.
Another important point that my hon. Friend made was that behind those innocent-looking videos—some are less than innocent-looking—there are serious racketeers at work. As my hon. Friend pointed out, IRA-Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland has funded its terrorism with such racketeering. I have had several conversations with the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Belfast on just that point. If we could find a way of clamping down on such crime, we would be saving people's lives in the long run. We should not work on the basis that as we now have a ceasefire in Northern Ireland the urgency is not so great. The urgency is always there. When we see how the money goes into weapons and arms, we must realise just how serious and important the new clause is.
Counterfeiting has funded killing machines not only in Britain but throughout the world. I was worried to read in the Home Affairs Select Committee report on organised crime just how international counterfeiting has become and how it has invaded Britain. An interesting submission was made to the Select Committee on just that point by the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Police Superintendents Association and the Police Federation.
The Committee examined some of the principal threats that have come from organisations such as the Chinese triads, who operate in Britain. The Committee was told that it was extremely difficult to assess the real extent of their activities, but that it was known that the triads had a high degree of responsibility for counterfeiting. The problems that have to be countered in trying to beat the Chinese triads include the insular nature of the Chinese community, the wall of silence that exists, the distrust of anyone who is not Chinese which makes the organisation impenetrable, the background of fear over many generations about the triads so that no one dares talk about them and the vicious and public nature of the attacks or retribution which promulgate the fear of triad societies. But the triads are just one organisation promoting counterfeit crime which the police are trying to crack.
The Select Committee also looked into the Caribbean criminals, who have caused great concern. In other

countries such as Japan, criminal gangs are rich with illicit funds. Such gangs have invaded our country. The Italian Mafia—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady for a third time, but I must return her to the substance of the new clause under consideration.

Lady Olga Maitland: With the greatest respect, I am trying to illustrate how important the new clause is. I am also trying to show that counterfeit crime is not only endemic in Britain but is being introduced from overseas and is operated here from just such sources. If you will just give—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Passing reference is one thing, but a general and thorough review of these matters is not germane to the new clause.

Lady Olga Maitland: Obviously, I bow to your judgment, Madam Deputy Speaker.
We should take the international aspects of counterfeit crime seriously because they have a bearing on counterfeit crime in Britain. The point was made earlier that counterfeit crime is not merely a harmless little boyo activity in Sunday markets. That boyo working at a Sunday market is often part of a nationwide organised criminal gang. For that reason, we have to take it very seriously.
On the more general point, counterfeiting is not just about films and recordings. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant) talked about other forms of counterfeiting. He was right. Whether we are talking about cheap reproductions of clothing—designer clothes, for instance—perfumes, watches and a whole host of different things, we have to recognise that it is a major crime which should have been included in the Bill in the first place. Now is the time to make sure that it is given the due consideration that it deserves.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. David Maclean): I have considerable sympathy with the new clause. I, too, am well aware of the concern that trade organisations and others have expressed about counterfeiting and copyright infringement. While a tremendous amount of the debate has concentrated on videos and the record industry—the music industry, I suppose we should call it now that there are CDs, tapes and so on—I am glad that my hon. Friends have mentioned other counterfeit products such as watches and designer clothing and shoes.
Many colleagues have also mentioned that counterfeiting is not—I shall have to use the expression so as not to be the only one not to use it in the debate—just a Del Boy type of crime. It is not just people who make a few copies for their friends and run off another few to sell to someone else. I suspect that many people think like that because most people start in that way, before it becomes heavy and organised, making just a few copies or a copy for their own use.
10.45 am
What Member of the House or what child these days does not buy a CD or album, as we used to call it, of greatest hits and inevitably find that they like only half, if they are lucky, or even just a third of it? So if one wants to listen to some music in the car, one ends up making a


compilation tape. I suspect that every youngster has started on the first step of what could be a counterfeiting career by doing something perfectly legitimate—namely, copying music for personal pleasure. I cannot imagine anyone in the House who has not made a compilation tape. Well, I imagine that my hon. Friend the Comptroller of Her Majesty's Household does not sit with the headphones on listening to a compilation tape of Wet Wet Wet.
It is probably because counterfeiting has such innocent beginnings that people tend to think that it cannot be a real crime. In every home in this country it is possible to reproduce music on to a tape. Those whom we are trying to get at today are those who massively reproduce material to sell it on and pass it off as something else. I was interested to read in one of my woodworking magazines last year about the man who invented the wonderful Black and Decker workmate. With its corporate muscle, Black and Decker has spent about £10 million worldwide trying to protect the copyright of that simple but brilliant machine from counterfeiters throughout the world.
When children cry out for the latest designer clothing or those designer shoes or trainers which cost £70 or £80 and still last no more than a month, it is no wonder that many parents are tempted, with screaming children in hand, to go to the market and pick up a £10 pair of apparently designer trainers. We can all have great sympathy with parents in those circumstances. If I read today's press correctly, I suspect that there will be a big market in Manchester United counterfeit strips as it has changed its strip for the seventh time in three years and charges £70 a time. That is good for Manchester United, but not so good for the parents who will feel obliged or pressured to buy a new one each time.
There is a large industry out there. We are also aware that America is concerned that some countries in the far east have massive state-run factories which mass-produce counterfeit equipment. The message that must go out is that this is a crime. I liked the way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) described it: it is theft—theft from the consumer, from the people who invented the original product and from the businesses involved. There can be no doubt that such activities represent a significant threat to legitimate businesses and, as we have heard disturbingly today, that they are a source of income to professional criminals. It is because I am concerned about the links with pornography and organised crime that I have initiated an on-going interdepartmental consultation exercise.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale will understand, the Home Office is not primarily responsible for the legislation that has a bearing on this problem. Clearly, it is sensible to ascertain an estimate of the number of cases that would arise from this proposal and whether the additional court costs and other costs can be met. I agree with my hon. Friend that the best way forward is probably not by means of an amendment to the Bill, which could create an unwelcome precedent. I am grateful also to my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) for making the matter clear in the Standing Committee on Wednesday when I was not able to be present. The use of an order made by the Secretary of State, which is already anticipated in part II of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, is probably the best way forward.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale asked some questions about the powers of the Crown court and magistrates courts. The Crown court has the power to make a confiscation order in respect of any offence listed in schedule 4 to the 1988 Act or, if it is not listed, in respect of any indictable offence—that is covered by section 71(9) of that Act. Magistrates courts can make a confiscation order only in respect of schedule 4 offences. They cannot make an order for any summary, or triable-either-way offence unless it is included in schedule 4. If we make an order and include summary or triable-either-way offences, which we could do, it would mean that the Crown court could still make a confiscation order if a triable-either-way offence is heard in the Crown court.
The interdepartmental consultation exercise is under way, considerable progress is being made, and I should be in a position to make known the outcome of our deliberations shortly. I certainly expect to be able to do so before the Bill completes its parliamentary passage. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale will consider that an important safeguard from his point of view and a measure of my good faith. I assure him that the Government will consider very sympathetically the addition of these offences to schedule 4 by means of an order.
I am afraid that, for the reasons that I explained, it would be better to use existing order-making powers. Since I have assured my hon. Friend that I am looking sympathetically at the matter and since I should be able to inform the House before the Bill has completed its parliamentary stages—with that important safeguard built in—I ask him not to press the new clause to the vote, but to leave the matter to the order making powers.

Sir John Hannam: This debate has touched chords in the House and will do so throughout the country. The scale and extent of the offences that my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) identified are known to pretty well every family in the country because of the measures that he pointed out and the examples that my hon. Friends have given in the debate.
I recall the pornographic videos that were displayed to Members of Parliament representing the Devon and Cornwall constabulary area, including my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Streeter), before we introduced legislation to deal with that type of obscenity. As has been described today, people are using the old pornographic videos, which no longer have any value, as cheap material for recording children's videos. That is a very disturbing example and the sort of thing that we really must deal with.
The thread running through the debate is that we are dealing with big crime and that is the sort of crime with which the Bill seeks to deal. Criminals are able to get away with it. They might have to pay a small fine or serve a short prison sentence, but until my Bill is enacted, any confiscation orders that might exist can be expunged.
This is an important debate and my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale introduced it in the manner to which we are accustomed from him. He covered all the important areas. I listened to the remarks of all my hon. Friends and of the Opposition spokeswoman, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche), with considerable interest because I have been involved in copyright matters. I am very sympathetic to the view that we must take action to close that gap.
The motives that underlie the new clause certainly have my support. Like my hon. Friend the Minister, however, I have reached the conclusion that the Bill is not the best forum for dealing with the matter. It is a question, not of whether the offences should be included in confiscation orders—there is no doubt about that—but of how best that can be achieved. As hon. Members will know, specified offences can be brought within the reach of confiscation powers under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 by adding them to schedule 4, as my hon. Friend pointed out. The 1988 Act lays down a procedure for amending schedule 4 by statutory instrument, which is a quicker and more straightforward way to amend it than an amendment by primary legislation, which the new clause is.
In 1990, schedule 4 was amended by statutory instrument to deal with the problem of acid house parties, from which large illicit profits were being made. Given that precedent, and the simplicity of established procedures for amending schedule 4 by statutory instrument, I am inclined to think that that is the right way to deal with this type of counterfeiting and copyright infringement offence.

Mr. John Greenway: This is the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter, but it is clear from what we have heard this morning—and from the support that I have received from my hon. Friends—that there is support throughout the House, but particularly on the Conservative Benches, for ensuring that the provisions of his Bill cover the types of crime that we have been discussing. He will want the Bill to cover such offences. Is he satisfied, from the discussions that he has had with our hon. Friend the Minister, that we shall get that statutory instrument and that when we leave the House today we shall be able to tell people in the film and record industries that we have been successful and that although the legislation will not be on the face of this Bill the Government are going to act?

Sir John Hannam: I can certainly assure my hon. Friend that I have every confidence that the outcome will

be the same for the serious offences under discussion as for other types of crime that have been brought within confiscation law through the statutory instrument procedure, such as acid house parties.
Some months ago, when I was first acquainted with the problem, I brought it to the notice of my hon. Friend the Minister. He responded immediately and encouraged me by saying that he would be considering the matter and that a review would take place. I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) that that would be the best route for dealing with the problem. I hope that it will not take too long.
I was pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister announced that we are to have a clear statement on this important matter before the Bill completes its passage through Parliament. While I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale for exposing this important subject, I hope that he will feel that the right way forward is to seek leave to withdraw his new clause.

Mr. John Greenway: We have had an interesting and thoughtful debate on the matter and I am most grateful for the support from my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter, other hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche) for the proposal that I brought before the House. Without question, the issues must be resolved quickly.
My hon. Friends the Minister and the Member for Exeter have given an assurance that they want those matters covered in legislation. I have listened carefully to their commitment and their assurance that those matters can be dealt with satisfactorily through a statutory instrument. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to introduce that statutory instrument as quickly as possible so that those offences are listed in part I of schedule 4 of the 1988 Act.
With the benefit of those assurances and the considerable airing that we have given the subject this morning, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

It being Eleven o'clock, MADAM SPEAKER interrupted the proceedings, pursuant to Standing Order No. 11 (Friday sittings).

Serious Fraud

11 am

The Attorney-General (Sir Nicholas Lyell): With permission, Madam Speaker, I wish to make a statement setting out the way ahead for the investigation and prosecution of serious and complex fraud.
This issue has now been the subject of two official reports: the Graham report, received in March 1994; and the report by a committee chaired by Mr. Rex Davie, formerly of the Cabinet Office, delivered to me at the beginning of February. The Graham report was published last year. I have today placed copies of the Davie report in the Library.
The key issue focused upon by the Davie Committee was whether to develop and build on the existing structures, or whether to merge them into one organisation and, if so, whether that organisation should be based upon the Serious Fraud Office or the fraud divisions of the Crown Prosecution Service. The clear advice of the Davie committee is that the existing structures should be retained and that the role of the police in SFO cases should be clarified. The Davie report makes that principal recommendation against a merger, and nine subsidiary recommendations. I accept them all.
The report emphasises the fact that fraud covers a wide spectrum, from the highly sophisticated banking and commercial frauds involved, for example, in the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International or the Guinness cases, to relatively straightforward deception. That broad range requires an effective, proportionate and flexible response. For the heaviest cases, the Davie report endorses the regime based upon Lord Roskill's report in 1986, which brings together the investigation and prosecution of fraud by a multi-disciplinary team of lawyers, accountants, both in-house and from the private sector, and the police, working at all stages under the aegis of a specialist prosecuting authority—the Serious Fraud Office. But intermediate cases can properly be handled by traditional police methods leading to prosecution by the less resource-intensive fraud divisions of the Crown Prosecution Service, and a substantial number of lesser cases should also continue to be prosecuted locally in each Crown Prosecution Service area.
I should emphasise that, despite the often misguided criticism to which the prosecuting agencies have been subject, the Serious Fraud Office and the fraud divisions of the CPS have made real advances since they were set up in the 1980s. In its seven years of existence to date, the Serious Fraud Office has brought to trial 141 major cases involving 309 defendants, of whom 191 have been convicted. More significantly, in over 75 per cent. of the cases brought to trial by the SFO, at least one person has been convicted, usually the principal defendant.
The Serious Fraud Office has a current case load of some 50 cases of which, on average, 20 have been brought to trial each year. At the intermediate level, the police in London and throughout England and Wales consult closely with the fraud divisions of the Crown Prosecution Service, London or provincial, in significant fraud cases prior to charge; and between them the two divisions have currently just under 100 cases being tried or awaiting trial in the Crown court. Each fraud division comprises a team of 15 lawyers, supported by in-house accountants, together with a very substantial input from independent

counsel, usually brought in at an early stage of any case going forward to prosecution. This system is less resource-intensive than the Serious Fraud Office but nevertheless provides a specialised service on a multi-disciplinary basis. Each CPS area also handles a number of fraud cases locally, again working in close co-operation with the police and counsel.
At whichever level cases are handled, high levels of expertise, experience and attention to detail are essential. The primary conclusion of the Davie report was that the broad structure of each organisation should remain unaltered. Its subsidiary but nonetheless important recommendations are as follows. It provided a revised set of criteria for determining whether cases should be handled by the Serious Fraud Office or the Crown Prosecution Service. Those criteria, which the report concludes should lead to a heavier case load for, and some enlargement of, the Serious Fraud Office, should be published. The allocation of resources as between the two prosecuting authorities in relation to their case load should be kept under review and the Serious Fraud Office should continue to adopt a flexible approach when deciding precisely how their cases should be handled.
The role of the Joint Vetting Committee, established following the Graham report to consider the allocation of cases, which do not fall clearly to the Serious Fraud Office or the fraud divisions, should be strengthened to allow consideration of policy issues and the Association of Chief Police Officers should be fully represented on the Joint Vetting Committee when policy issues are discussed. The role of the police in Serious Fraud Office cases needs to be clarified, perhaps in a memorandum of understanding.
Finally, there should be closer co-ordination between the two prosecuting agencies to encourage a pooling of expertise, a common approach to policy issues, and improved arrangements for the interchange of staff to broaden their experience and provide for enhanced career development.
The Director of Public Prosecutions, the Director of the Serious Fraud Office and I all welcome the constructive measures suggested in the two reports. They bring to an end what has been a period of uncertainty for both organisations and provide a sound blueprint for future improvements. There can be no room for complacency, but it can be said with confidence that, without the present structures and organisation, many of the heaviest cases successfully brought to trial and conviction would never have been tried at all. Once the constructive recommendations of these two reports are in place, the ability of both organisations to perform their heavy tasks will be significantly enhanced. The Government are wholly committed to the effective and efficient prosecution of fraud at all levels. I commend the proposals to the House.

Mr. John Morris: I welcome the Davie report and the Attorney-General's conclusions. While I would not necessarily have devised the Serious Fraud Office and maintained a fraud division of the Crown Prosecution Service at the same time, a shotgun marriage now is not the best way to proceed.
There is no single measure of the effectiveness of a prosecuting authority and we are not in the business of knocking either the SFO or the CPS for knocking's sake. Does the Attorney-General accept from my experience


that both the SFO and the fraud division of the CPS handle complex and difficult cases, and that the number of convictions is not necessarily a yardstick by which to judge their effectiveness?
As regards the Attorney-General's responsibility, will he satisfy himself that both authorities make the widest use of counsel of experience, including those usually defending, and instruct them to consider the further lightening of indictments, what can be done to limit the breadth of evidence, and concentrate on prosecuting the prime wrongdoers rather than trying to catch every tiddler, thereby simplifying the difficult and onerous task of jurors?
As enormous costs are frequently at stake, will the Attorney-General convey to the Lord Chancellor the need to ensure the strongest pool of competent judges to try those cases, and perhaps to signify their qualities properly? That perhaps is often the heart of the matter.
Will the Attorney-General reconsider his remarks about the need to clarify the role of the police in the SFO—a masterly understatement, if ever there was one? I have read the Davie report, which speaks of a much more serious position. It refers to "confusion and uncertainty" in direction of investigations, says that
relations work in the majority of cases
end mentions
the need to resolve current tensions.
It is a masterly understatement to speak of clarifying.
Does the Attorney-General share the anxiety of some commentators that for a time there were few, if any, references from the London police forces to the SFO? The Graham report notes:
The recent trend of provincial forces collectively to refer more cases than the two London forces is contrary to the expectation that the more likely place of incidence of serious fraud is in London.
Has that now changed? Will he personally ensure the greatest participation by the police in the SFO? Is it good use of scarce talent for the police to serve in the SFO at a very high level for a relatively short time and transfer to more mundane duties, including traffic, very soon after?
Will the Attorney-General make a further report to Parliament on what will be achieved by better co-ordination between the SFO and the fraud division in allocating cases? The report refers to "confusing overlap". Perhaps we might know, as a significant increase in the work of the SFO appears to be intended, what proportion that is likely to be. Will he also ensure that the alarming finding that there is little contact on professional questions between the CPS and the SFO becomes a matter of history?
The use of new methods of recording evidence and new technology has helped juries in their difficult task in some recent complex cases. Will the Attorney-General ensure that resources are not denied to the SFO to make the task of juries easier?

The Attorney-General: First, may I thank the right hon. and learned Gentlemen warmly for his welcome, and his recognition of the value of the Serious Fraud Office and the fraud divisions of the Crown Prosecution Service? He and I are in entire agreement about that important matter and we share the opinion that Davie has correctly identified the way ahead.
I accept that both organisations have a complex and difficult role. No one should underestimate the strain on everyone involved—the investigating police and accountants, counsel who presents the case and, indeed, the judge—of those heavy cases.
The right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris) is right that one must seek experienced counsel to present those cases, that the indictments should not be overweighted by an excessive number of charges, that they should be well focused on the principal suspects and the principal aspects of the case, and that they should not be diverted on to minor and subsidiary matters.
I agree that the selection of the judge is of huge importance. The House should pay respect to the enormous burden on the judge in trying a long case of that nature. There are two key factors in those cases; clear, comprehensive and comprehensible presentation by the prosecution and a clear absorption by the judge, who must keep the case steady, prevent it from being unduly interrupted by unnecessary technicality and then present the case clearly and fairly to the jury in his summing-up. It is a heavy task, for which we owe a deep debt of gratitude to the judges who work so hard to carry it out.
An important argument in the Davie report is that the role of the police needs to be clarified in the SFO, so that the police who work there, who have an immensely important role to play—I say that with great emphasis—have a line of accountability that they fully understand and which enables the Director of the Serious Fraud Office, with his heavy duties, to have clear control and direction of cases under his command.
For a time, there was a reduction in the number of cases coming forward in London. There has been a pick-up. The exact reasons for it are difficult to deduce, although it may be something to do with the recession.
It has been suggested that the police should spend longer periods in the Serious Fraud Office. I have taken a close interest in that matter for about 14 years, since I was first parliamentary private secretary to Sir Michael Havers, long before those offices were set up.
It is specialisation, it is the fact that one knows the game of fraud as well as or better than the fraudsters, that makes an excellent investigator and prosecutor. That applies to the police, and they must be given an opportunity to build up that long-term expertise.
In answer to the final questions of the right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon, yes, we shall maintain a close watch on the way in which those matters develop. I am sure that the subject will come up in questions, rightly, from time to time. The shift to the Serious Fraud Office must be considered case by case. We are not dealing with supermarket products here; we are dealing with decisions carefully tailored to heavy cases.
The lack of contact in the past between the SFO and the fraud divisions of the CPS is something that I wish to be changed. Before the report was produced, I had the opportunity to visit and talk personally to the great majority of the lawyers and accountants who deal with those prosecutions. They are anxious for closer contact. They seek an enhanced career structure. I am determined that we shall give it to them.
Technology is of great importance. In a recent case, the judge praised the way in which 17,000 documents were kept on computer and might be brought instantly to the attention of the jury, greatly enhancing the management of the case.

Mr. John Greenway: I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend's statement. Does he agree that, with the increased prevalence of technology, especially throughout the banking and financial services world, the opportunities for fraud are greatly increased? Does not that demonstrate that the only effective way to discourage those people is to create the certainty that they will be detected and successfully prosecuted? He is right to draw attention to the importance of skills.
I make a plea that the skills in the police are not undervalued by the police themselves, and that there is a proper career structure for police officers working in the Serious Fraud Office, so that their expertise and experience is not wasted by their being returned to other duties.

The Attorney-General: I agree strongly with what my hon. Friend has said. He is a former police officer, and I know, from my several visits to the SFO and the CPS fraud divisions, the huge role that the police do and should play in those matters. They deserve clear lines of accountability and a proper career structure, so that they can play a maximum part in those heavy and important cases and thereby help to show the fraudster that crime does not pay and that it does lead to the condign punishment that it deserves.

Mr. Archy Kirkwood: I am willing to give a cautious welcome to the statement that has been made. I think that the decision to build on the existing structures is the right one, but does the Attorney-General accept that there remains a good deal of uncertainty and disquiet in the public's mind about the process? Can he confirm that the existing structures must be built on and developed, as he said, so that the public confidence that we need can be established? The jury is still out on the SFO. Although today's announcement will go a long way to dispelling public disquiet, work still needs to be done.
Do any of the Davie recommendations deal with the Attorney-General's role in monitoring the process in future? That was mentioned earlier and it is an essential part of building the confidence in the system which the public are entitled to feel about it. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right that we owe a debt of gratitude to judges who conduct such cases. Are they sufficiently trained, however, to digest and break down the evidence that is put before lay members of the jury, so that those juries can make sensible decisions? Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman have urgent discussions with the Lord Chancellor to satisfy himself that judges receive the training that is adequate for the task?

The Attorney-General: The hon. Gentleman makes a number of good points with which I agree. I am grateful for his welcome of the conclusions of the Davie report. He is right to agree that we should build on the existing structures.
The hon. Gentleman may say that the jury is out on the SFO or the fraud divisions of the CPS, but they deal with heavy cases. If any of them go wrong it generates a huge amount of publicity. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman

would agree that to achieve a conviction in 75 per cent. of SFO cases, usually of the principal defendant, is no mean achievement. A certain number of interested people like to run down the prosecuting authorities, perhaps in the hope that they will be less effective in turning their gaze in certain directions.
As for my role, I can tell the House that I and my hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor-General, who has 30 years of prosecuting experience, including such heavy cases, take a close interest in the operation of both organisations, with the assistance of the Directors of the SFO and of Public Prosecutions and we will continue to do so.
The hon. Gentleman is right to emphasise not only the burden on judges, but the importance of training. I shall keep in close touch with my noble Friend the Lord Chancellor on such matters.

Mr. Oliver Heald: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the SFO has now acquired unique specialist skills and experience? Many cases, such BCCI, Barlow Clowes and Guinness, would not have come to trial without that knowledge and its ability to get behind the defences of some of the most sophisticated criminals in the country.
Does my right hon. and learned Friend also agree that the other area in which the SFO has scored recently is in the presentation of cases? At Oxford recently, Judge May stressed that the way in which 17,000 court documents could be presented by the SFO using computer screens was a fantastic aid to the jury and saved a lot of court time. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, having achieved all those improvements and having that knowledge, it is more likely in the future that criminals will be detected and successfully prosecuted by the SFO than before? Is not that a tribute to its work?

The Attorney-General: My hon. Friend makes a number of good points. It is typical of us in Britain that we often run ourselves down when the rest of the world is praising us. The members of the SFO and the CPS are in great demand overseas, as are their directors, because the rest of the world wants to know how to organise its serious fraud prosecution and prosecution processes generally. My hon. Friend is absolutely correct that, going back to the early 1980s, fraud cases took enormously longer to prosecute. I remember one of the Lloyd's cases, known as the Gang of Four case, which took about seven years to come to trial and which did not lead to a conviction. The speed and efficiency with which that sort of matter is now investigated, in tandem with the Department of Trade and Industry, is a sea change from those days. It is a remarkable thing to be able to draw up any one of 17,000 documents, as required, with proper indexing, word recognition and so on. That is the way ahead; my hon. Friend is right to point to it.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Is the Attorney-General aware that, by making a narrow statement on the Davie committee report, he has missed a great opportunity to remove from the public's mind the idea that there are two standards of justice in Britain? It seems extremely odd that he has not used this opportunity to explain why some of those millionaire crooks, like Levitt, the Maxwell brothers and others, can get legal aid while they hand around at court. Some of those cases take a month of Sundays, but the people involved manage to live off the public purse and finish up with a few hours' community service.
Why has the right hon. and learned Gentleman not used today as a chance to explain how the prosecution of such cases will be sped up even more? He should have said that the SFO will explain how the treatment of those in the City, who are making money hand over fist at Baring Brothers and the like, and who have not been brought to justice, will compare to the justice meted out to the little old lady who takes a tin of pilchards from Marks and Spencer and gets locked up within a month?

The Attorney-General: I am not going down the road of commenting on individual cases, particularly any that may be currently before the courts. I invite the hon. Gentleman to take an unusual course and to praise what everyone else in the House has been right to see merit in. The steps that we are taking and the steps that we have taken through the SFO and the fraud divisions of the CPS have done and are doing exactly what he wants. It is ensuring that a high standard of justice will bring the spotlight, indeed the searchlight, to bear on the activities of fraudsters and will bring them to justice far more effectively than before.

Mr. Jacques Arnold: The public could be forgiven if they thought that all fraud cases are either handled according to a conspiracy theory, which seems to be the theory of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), or the cock-up theory, which is often presented to the public by the press. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it is rather encouraging that, of the cases that the SFO brings to court, it gains convictions in three quarters of them, frequently of the principal fraudsters? That is particularly meritorious in the light of the complexities of the matter. Does my right hon. and learned Friend consider that what he has announced today will further strengthen the idea in the public mind that fraudsters will be caught up with and properly dealt with by the competent authorities?

The Attorney-General: I agree with my hon. Friend. One can make all sorts of interesting stories in the press. The really interesting story today is that one does not lightly get away with serious fraud. If a case does not lead to prosecution for any reason, even a humanitarian one, where the case is stopped because the defendant is thought to be at danger of his life, as happened in one important case, that is described by some newspapers as a fiasco. That is simply not true. I am not so complacent as to say that there are not lessons to be learned from some past cases—there are—but my hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the high conviction rate that has rightly been achieved as a result of attention to detail and the focusing of expertise.

Mr. Harry Barnes: There is a clear need to be tough on serious fraud, but it is not clear whether the cautious Davie report goes far towards doing that. There is also a need to be tough on the causes of serious fraud. Does the Davie report touch those areas by starting to deal with the problems of our rip-off society? Does it offer any suggestions that other Ministers should be involved because of concerns about the way in which the Government have led society in the past 15 years?

The Attorney-General: I would not describe this as a cautious report. A report that has the courage to say, in

the face of often immoderate criticism, that it is not necessary to pull everything up by the roots, is a brave report and right.
As for standards in society, the message that I am delivering loudly and clearly is, "If you think you can get away with fraud, you are wrong. We will not put up with it in today's society." We are putting in place highly effective measures to bring wrongdoers to justice.

Mr. James Clappison: I join in the general welcome given to my right hon. and learned Friend's statement. Does he agree that the cause of crime is criminals and the cause of fraud is fraudsters, whatever the Opposition may think? Does not bringing fraudsters to justice in serious fraud cases usually involve a difficult and complex undertaking, which must be supported by a prosecuting team with the right level of specialist skills and experience?
Should not we view the performance of the SFO against that background? Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that convictions at a strike rate of 75 per cent. of cases suggests that some worthwhile progress has been made? There is also good value for money because the SFO's budget is only about £20 million, which must be seen against the much greater cost of loss and damage caused by fraud. Should not we now give the SFO wide-ranging public support in the important task that it is undertaking?

The Attorney-General: My hon. Friend is right. He mentioned the cost of investigating and prosecuting serious fraud cases through the SFO as being just under £20 million a year. Professor Levi of Cardiff university, in a recent study, pointed out that that cost should be viewed against the direct loss involved in the SFO's current case load of some £6 billion. It is money properly focused on the worthwhile target of bringing guilty suspects to justice.

Mr. Alan Duncan: My right hon. and learned Friend is right to point out the relative success record of the SFO in its prosecutions. However, are not many of the cases so complex and complicated that it is increasingly unrealistic to expect the jury system and the individual members of a jury sufficiently to understand the details of the issues involved to have the confidence to convict? Will my right hon. and learned Friend consider introducing legislation that would allow many of those uniquely complicated cases to be transferred to decisions by judges, rather than by jury, and so enhance the SFO's future success rate?

The Attorney-General: My hon. Friend rightly makes an important point. It is one on which we focus careful attention from time to time. The point about serious fraud cases and, indeed, most fraud cases, is that while they are complex in execution, they tend to be quite simple in concept—really just hands in the till. The big task is to present the case clearly so that something that the fraudster hopes is buried in tonnes of paper or lost in the interstices of a computer is actually laid clearly before the court. The main burden falls on the prosecution and the judge, and if they can do an effective job juries seldom fail to understand the case in the end. I do not close my mind to my hon. Friend's point, but I think that I have put my finger on the key issue.

Mr. Piers Merchant: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree with the Davie report that the


key task for the SFO is consultation with senior police officers to ensure that the essential role of the police in large cases is properly defined?

The Attorney-General: Yes, I do. It is right that the report should not funk that important question. As the right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris) pointed out, in most cases the police work effectively with the SFO. However, there are tensions. It is difficult to work for one organisation when, in a sense, one's loyalty is owed to another. I look forward to tackling the problem with the SFO and CPS Directors and with the police commissioners, to help them to find a satisfactory resolution from the highest level downwards.

Lady Olga Maitland: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that it would be helpful to the public if they could understand more of the workings of the SFO, bearing in mind the fact that it employs highly skilled, highly efficient people to tackle very organised crime?

The Attorney-General: Yes, I agree. Indeed, the SFO holds an open invitation to any hon. Member to go and see how it carries out its work. It is fairly impressive to go through its floors, to meet the people who spend a major part of their careers focusing on such an important area and to see how computers can bring the documentation under control so that cases can be marshalled to ensure that something that is immensely complex to start with can be shown in its true light and, if it be the case, its true criminality.

Proceeds of Crime Bill

As amended (in the Standing Committee), further considered.

Clause 2

CONFISCATION RELATING TO A COURSE OF CRIMINAL CONDUCT

Sir John Hannam: I beg to move amendment No. 1, in page 3, line 22, leave out 'four' and insert 'two'.
The clause, which is the cutting edge of the Bill, was examined carefully in Committee. As a result of that detailed scrutiny, I undertook to reconsider whether the first trigger in new section 72AA(1)(c)(i), which requires four convictions on qualifying offences in the same proceedings, should be lowered.
This is an important issue because the trigger enables a court to apply the assumptions provided for in the clause. I remind the House that the Bill would empower the courts to assume that all property that had passed through a defendant's hands during the past six years had come from crime.
In accordance with my undertaking in Committee, I have given the matter careful consideration. The amendment would enable a court to make the assumptions contained in the clause when the defendant stands convicted of two convictions in the same proceedings. Hon. Members will recognise that this amendment is identical to the amendment tabled in Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Gamier), which we discussed at some length. I am pleased to be able to respond favourably today.
As I said on Second Reading, great concern is expressed by my constituents—and, I am sure, by the constituents of other hon. Members—about the enormous profits made by those who indulge in a criminal life style. The law already provides tough measures against drug traffickers and terrorists, so it would be most unfortunate if other sorts of criminals, such as those we have discussed this morning, were able to continue to enjoy their profits because we had not set the trigger at the right level.
Obviously, we would not want the new powers to be used unfairly or in unviable cases, but hon. Members will note that they are discretionary. I am sure that we can rely on the discretion of the prosecutors and the courts to bring the powers to bear only where it would be proper to do so.
I believe that there is sufficient justification to change the first trigger from four qualifying offences in the same proceedings to two such offences. I hope that the change will find favour on both sides of the House.

Mrs. Roche: The hon. Member for Exeter has tabled an important amendment, which goes to the crux of the Bill. It is a difficult judgment to make. There were extensive discussions on the matter in Committee—perhaps rather deliberately overlong. Both the Minister and the hon. Member for Exeter felt that there was a difficult balancing act in deciding precisely how to phrase the triggering mechanism.
It is absolutely right that we are keen to catch those people who have cleverly evaded the law for some considerable time. We know that many serious criminals


who are involved in organised crime may not have any previous convictions, and that those who do have previous convictions that go back some years. They probably do not have many convictions when it comes to the "successful" period of their organised crime. It is important, therefore, to consider the triggering mechanism. It is also right, however, that when we consider the balance, we are fair and reasonable, as the hon. Member for Exeter said.
During our deliberations, the hon. Member for Exeter said that he was anxious that assumptions should not be made in trivial cases because he did not want the new powers on forfeiture to fall into disrepute. I would echo those remarks. In general, if the Bill tightens up the law and catches that class of criminal, that will be considered seriously by Labour Members.
I should like to issue a little warning note and probe the matter in some detail. At the end of what I hope will be a short debate, perhaps the hon. Gentleman and the Minister will give us an assurance about the nature of the discretion. How will that discretion operate? What will the guidelines be? How will they be made? We are concerned to get the legislation right. It is important that opportunities exist for monitoring and review, so that we can be absolutely assured that the Act is working well, that any changes work well and that the people involved in serious crime, whom hon. Members on both sides of the House want the law to catch, will be caught. At the same time, however, we do not want to catch people in the net who have no place there. My hon. Friends and I look forward to hearing those assurances from the Minister and from the hon. Member for Exeter.

Mr. John Greenway: For the second time this morning, I find myself passing on apology to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, from one of my hon. Friends—on this occasion, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Gamier). As has been mentioned, he skilfully moved an identical amendment in Committee. I confess that, when I went to the Committee sitting that morning, I had not given a great deal of thought to his amendment, but the more I listened to his arguments, the more convinced I became that it was an important amendment and one that we should make to the Bill.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough could not be here to do it himself, I was determined to table the amendment. When I saw the published amendments, I was delighted to find that the amendment that I had tabled had at its head the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter rather than mine. That clearly showed that he had done what he had promised to do in Committee, which was to go away, talk to Home Office officials, think about the matter and come back on Report and give his verdict. I am delighted that his verdict is that we should make the change.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough put his finger on the issue right at the start of his speech in Committee when he asked, "Why is four the magic number?" It seemed a good question. If you, Madam Deputy Speaker, think this matter through yourself, I shall imagine this scenario. A real villain goes before a court and the opportunity exists to seize the proceeds of crime—which is the matter at the heart of the Bill. The jury decides that not enough evidence exists to convict

him of all the charges on the long list before it, and it might decide to convict him of one, two, possibly three, but not four. The measure, therefore, seems sensible.
Another reason exists as to why the figure should be two. Clause 2 tries to establish a pattern of offending. May we just remind ourselves of what, in effect, the clause says and the general arrangement? The question of whether four or two offences are taken into account arises only if it is the first conviction of the person concerned. If, however, he has been convicted previously, only one offence is needed to trigger the measure. Whether one offence triggers it on two occasions, or whether two offences trigger it on one occasion, the principle is the same. That speaks for itself. It is a common-sense approach to establish that pattern.
11.45 am
Another reason exists, however, as to why the amendment is right. As was clear from the earlier debate on new clause 1, we are dealing with an attempt to target the serious professional organised criminal. We have just had a statement about the Serious Fraud Office. The matter involves that organisation as well. The police service and the Crown Prosecution Service have a difficult enough job securing convictions. Organised criminals are not the sort of people who put their hands up in court and say, "Okay, guvnor, it's a fair cop. You've got me bang to rights. I plead guilty and don't be too hard on me because I've got my mum and three kids at home to support." We are dealing not with such people but with people who run criminal operations as a business. They will undoubtedly be trying to ensure that they are not convicted of anything.

Mrs. Roche: I take the hon. Gentleman's argument. Clearly, we are dealing with the sort of people who, to use the expression that was used when I practised at the Bar, would not put their hands up and admit to the crime straight away. We are talking about a trigger of two offences rather than four. However, a defendant who might have pleaded guilty to both offences may decide, because of the trigger, to plead not guilty to avoid confiscation coming into effect. That is a slight concern. I would welcome the hon. Gentleman's reassurances on that point.

Mr. Greenway: The hon. Lady makes a good point, but the answer to that is that four offences are worse than two. The danger is that a defendant would plead guilty to two offences but not to four or five. We must give the courts and the criminal justice agencies all the flexibility that they need to deal with any eventuality.
For organised criminals to be convicted at all is a huge mountain for the system to climb. It is illogical that we should say that there must be four mountains. I accept the point that two offences are laid down in the measure to establish a pattern. One offence may trigger the measure on two separate occasions or two offences could trigger it on one occasion.
I must explain why I am not especially worried that there might be abuse. We can legislate all we want, but, at the end of the day, it is the courts that will implement the law. I have no doubt that judges will need a great deal of persuading that it would be right to use the provisions in the Bill every time some Johnny-come-lately appears in court having at long last been convicted of a couple of offences and they are asked to make an order to confiscate every penny in his bank account. I think that the courts


could be very cautious in the use of these provisions and would want to be sure that there were good grounds for making the type of orders provided for in the Bill.
It must be right, however, that we give the courts the necessary flexibility and choice. I think that we can rely on the judgment of the courts in every case to use the powers sensibly, but, unless the relevant number of offences is two rather than four, few opportunities will arise for the powers to be used.
I support the amendment and I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter was successful in persuading the Minister that it should be accepted.

Mr. Merchant: I, too, see no rationale for making it a requirement that four convictions rather than two offences should be the trigger. Even now, I do not really understand how or why the figure was arrived at.
On a superficial level, one might be tempted to suggest that one conviction alone should be sufficient. After all, the intention should be to confiscate the assets of anyone who is involved in criminal activity and who has profited from it. However, I understand that the Bill is aimed specifically at those who build their lives on crime and who are involved in long-standing and often complex crimes. For that reason, I accept that a trigger of one offence would be too restrictive and that we should insist on a requirement that shows a continuity of crime, as it were. In that sense, two would be the minimum number, so I think that the amendment has got it right.
It is often clear to a court that a person convicted of a crime has been involved in criminal activity for a long time. That may not be obvious at first in the charge or even in the hearing, but it will emerge during the case itself, especially when examination reveals that the person has large assets behind him that could not come from anything other than crime.
Drugs are an example in point. People are often charged with a drugs offence which may be small in cash terms. However, when their entire background is examined, it may be found that they have accumulated huge reserves of money resulting from their involvement in crime for many years. The Bill aims specifically at those sorts of people—those involved in continual crime. For that reason, I think that two offences should be ample.
For various technical reasons, a person may be charged with one or two specimen offences even though it is clear that he has carried out a number of identical crimes. It is important that he should not escape the Bill's provisions simply because there were only two specimen charges and the trigger was four offences.
I welcome the fact that the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche) supports the amendment. Having read the report of the proceedings in Committee, I do not quite understand why she complains that the debate on what she has admitted is an important matter lasted 45 minutes or why the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) objected at the time.

Mrs. Roche: If the hon. Gentleman reads the account of the first morning of the Committee stage and the following week's deliberations, he will realise that there was a deliberate attempt to filibuster, which we consider to be a great pity. Some Conservatives did not want another private Member's Bill to be debated. That was a shame, especially as the Bill was so warmly welcomed by all parties.

Madam Deputy Speaker: I trust that we will not have a post mortem on the Committee proceedings.

Mr. Merchant: I shall certainly not get drawn into that. I was saying that I welcome the Opposition's support for the amendment and was questioning why the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green suggested that a 45-minute debate was excessive for what she admitted is an important principle. I hope that the House will support the amendment.

Mr. Streeter: I must confess that I am not fully persuaded that the amendment is entirely right, and I look forward to my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) or, indeed, the Minister, being able to reassure me. I am not against reducing the number of offences from four to two, but why is there a qualifying hurdle at all? I hope that I can be satisfied on that point.
It is right to give the courts the maximum power to confiscate the proceeds of crime. I am concerned about the cases involving a defendant who may have committed only one offence but where that offence may have been involved numerous acts of criminality over a long period. The example of conspiracy, which was mentioned in Committee, is the obvious one that comes to mind. The offence is technically one crime, but it will have involved a series of criminal acts over a long period. It is important that prosecutors are not prevented from opting to prosecute on a charge of conspiracy simply because it would not necessarily trigger the confiscation provisions—in other words, getting over the hurdle of the two offences being brought before the court.
I feel strongly that the balance of our criminal justice system must be weighted increasingly against criminals. There is concern that for too long—due no doubt to the liberal intellectual thinking of so many in the Home Office in the past 30 years—the balance has too often been weighted in favour of the criminal, especially the professional criminal. I suppose that I should declare an interest in that I am a partner in a law firm, although I have never practised criminal law. However, I know that the regular and persistent offender, as soon as he is tapped on the shoulder by Her Majesty's constabulary, will turn to his brief. There is nothing wrong with that, but every trick in the book is then employed to ensure that there is no conviction.
If there is any doubt about where to draw the line on the confiscation of the proceeds of crime, we should draw it in such a way as to allow the courts maximum discretion and flexibility. We have to show criminals that crime does not pay and we need to hit them where it hurts.
Some concern has been expressed about the impact on the families of criminals if we confiscate too much of the proceeds of crime. It has been said that the sins of the father should not be visited on the second and third generations. It is unrealistic none the less to attempt to insulate families of criminals from the consequences of their parents' acts. Often, families take the benefits. With lifestyle criminals, of which we have heard, families are quick enough to take the benefits such as swimming pools, Spanish villas and so on. We should not draw back from imposing on them too the burdens of their actions. It is an inalienable law of the universe that children benefit or suffer from their parents' actions. I hope that the line may be drawn in the right place so that we may give courts the maximum ability to confiscate the proceeds of crime.
12 noon
None the less, I recognise that, in some instances, there needs to be an opportunity to spell out to a criminal that whereas in life everyone deserves one chance at least, on a second occasion, much more severe consequences would befall him. I am attracted to the system of sentencing which was introduced by the Republican governor in California, Pete Wilson, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, North (Mr. Heald) referred, of three strikes and out. A criminal may get one chance and be sentenced for that crime and perhaps again on the second occasion the punishment fits the crime. But if that criminal re-offends to the extent that it is his third conviction, irrespective of the sort of crime, are not we entitled to draw the conclusion that the person is a persistent, habitual offender and should be punished ever so severely?
I am especially attracted to that proposition because I have learned that the police in Plymouth reckon that 80 per cent. of crime is caused by 1 per cent. of the population: persistent, hardened, professional offenders. We need to target those people in our fight against crime. That is what the Bill and the amendment is all about.
I welcome an approach to criminal enforcement that targets habitual, persistent offenders. To that extent, the amendment goes some way to satisfy me that we are moving the walls in on such people. I need to be reassured that we need such a qualification at all. Why not give courts the maximum flexibility to confiscate the proceeds of crime?

Lady Olga Maitland: I warmly support this amendment. My constituents in Sutton take a very tough attitude toward crime. They see no reason why anybody should get away with it, or why there should be any degree of soft treatment. Therefore, why do we need such a trigger mechanism? My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Streeter) had a point. If we are too prescriptive, we could let the bad one get away with it. My instinct tells me that we entrust so much to the courts that the power of discretion is definitely worth considering because there is no evidence that it would be abused.
I read the Committee proceedings of the Bill and saw that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Gamier) asked what was magical about four offences rather than two, to which we never really got an answer. I think that the court would quickly establish that evidence of two convictions would be sufficient for anyone to appreciate that there was something quite serious at fault. Moreover, you can bet your bottom dollar that for every crime committed by very sophisticated, hard criminals who specialise in organised crime, dozens more never come to light. Therefore those one or two convictions on his record are simply the tip of the iceberg. The pattern is well established.
In seriously considering this amendment, we should question why we should not go the whole way. Why have it at all? We want to put out a clear message to all the organised criminals that there is no safe haven and that they cannot try to protect themselves in technicalities of the law because the law in the end will get the better of them. The public will not stand for it. My constituents

will not stand for it. They are mortified when they read stories of high-class, or what I call low-class criminals, leading a high life overseas on fat profits. We have an opportunity to get at those people, ensure that they do not escape and that in the end they serve a penalty which fits their crime.

Mr. Maclean: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) for tabling the amendment which, as we have discussed this morning, would change the first trigger in clause 2 from four to two convictions in the same proceedings. I point out that it is changing one of the triggers in the Bill because we do not want the message to go out from the House that there are two strikes before one is bankrupt. That is not the case. This trigger mechanism—if the House agrees—will be amended from four offences to two, but the other mechanism in the clause means that the lifestyle proceeds of a criminal can be taken from him if he is up in court on one offence and convicted and has been previously convicted in the former qualifying period.
I also pay tribute to my hon. Friends for making some pretty forceful speeches in Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Gamier) has been mentioned. If I remember correctly, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, North (Mr. Heald) also made an important and telling speech in which he invoked the great train robbers.

Mr. John Greenway: That was me.

Mr. Maclean: I apologise. My hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) invoked the great train robbers, and perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, North built on the idea. To be fair, Opposition Members also asked us to look at the issue. My hon. Friends pointed out in powerful speeches the anomalies that may arise when a conviction of four relevant offences in the same proceedings is required before the assumptions are applied. My hon. Friend the Member for Exeter discussed with me whether we had the right level. As my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter and I said in Committee, it was a matter of judgment. My hon. Friend thought that the figure of four was relevant, so did the Government, but my hon. Friend has pressed us to consider another level.
Why did we arrive at the figure of four? We arrived at it because we thought committing four offences had to be indicative of a continuing course of criminal conduct. I have listened carefully to what my hon. Friends the Members for Sutton and for Sutton and Cheam have said this morning. There must be something in the water in places called Sutton to make my hon. Friends so robust in their attitude toward criminals, which I welcome.
My hon. Friends asked why we should not get rid of the trigger mechanism and why we should not take it down from two to one? I think that they may have thought, although they did not say—perhaps some other hon. Members may be under this misapprehension—that a criminal can be allowed to burgle or steal once and hang on to the goodies and that it is not until he is convicted a second time that the courts may confiscate anything. That is not the case. At the moment, the law allows us quite rightly to take back the goodies from burglary, robbery and theft. We can confiscate assets to the value of the goods which have been stolen for a single offence.
In this Bill, we are considering a new power to say that in addition to taking back the goods stolen or the value of the assets stolen or defrauded or whatever, we shall apply an assumption in law that everything else that the criminal has—the cars, the swimming pools, the house, the money in the bank account—are also ill-gotten gains.
One needs to show a pattern of offending behaviour before, in all fairness, one can apply those assumptions. It is no good saying that someone who has been convicted of one crime was probably responsible for others. We cannot go on gut feelings that someone may have been a criminal; we must rely on the convictions before the court. If someone is convicted of only one offence, it is right to take back from him the value of the goods involved in the theft or crime, but it is not right to apply an assumption and to say, "In addition, chummy, we are going to take everything else you own because you probably got that from theft as well." That would be unfair. That is the counterbalance to the argument that four is too high a level. I believe that one is too low a level. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter in setting the trigger at two. It is, of course, only one of the two triggers in the Bill.
The amendment will provide the prosecutors and the courts with additional flexibility and additional discretion about which cases are pursued; that discretion is important. Obviously, there will be cases in which it is not appropriate to apply the assumption. That is taken into account by the proposal's discretionary nature.
The Home Office intends to be closely involved with the Crown Prosecution Service in the formulation of guidelines. We shall ask the prosecuting authorities to monitor, over a set period, the kinds of cases that are being dealt with under clause 2. Clearly, we expect the powers to be used when police inquiries show evidence of persistent offending. We should, however, bear it in mind that the powers cannot be used just at the whim of the police or at the whim of the CPS. The assumption in the Bill can be triggered only by notice by the prosecution. After the prosecution has given notice, the courts have the final say on whether the assumption will apply in a particular case.
We do not want the powers to be used in trivial cases. There may be various ethical and moral reasons for that; there are also some pretty sound financial reasons. Much as it might please me, my hon. Friends and, perhaps, the victims of burglary to believe that we could clean out the video and the telly from the home of the burglar who stole them from us, there would be little tactical point in doing so. We would be cutting the taxpayer's nose to spite our faces if we had to spend a few thousand pounds on CPS fees, lawyers' fees, accountants' fees and court fees. Inevitably, there will be a cost in going after the assets of lifestyle criminals. I see no merit in spending £5,000 or £6,000 in such costs just to get a few hundred pounds back, although it might give us pleasure to think that the criminal was paying a proper penalty.
The way in which to deal with such criminals is through the fines, penalties or imprisonment they face. I want the powers in the Bill to be used where there is a net return for the taxpayer. I want the powers to be used when we get much more back than the money we spend on going for the lifestyle criminal's proceeds. That is a sound investment for the Treasury and for all involved in fighting crime.
I welcome this short debate; I am glad that it has been shorter than the debate in Committee, although the points made then were valid and sensible. The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche) is right. This issue goes to the heart of the Bill. Our short debate this morning has been terribly important. I welcome the amendment and I welcome the support it has on both sides. I commend it to the House because I believe that it strengthens the Bill significantly and it enjoys the Government's full support. I look forward, when the Bill has gone safely through another place without amendment, to giving maximum publicity and attention to these provisions. I hope that we may not have to use them in some cases; I hope that they will scare lifestyle criminals witless. They will know that they will not profit from their ill-gotten gains. They will realise that it is not just the money that they have stolen, but all the rest of their property and goods which could be taken back unless they can prove that they have got them honestly.

Sir John Hannam: I am grateful for the support for the amendment shown by hon. Members on both sides of the House. My hon. Friend the Minister has covered most of the points raised by hon. Members. We are toughening up the Bill, which was the desire of the Committee. In answer to the point made by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche), we are dealing with the triggering of assumptions. Other clauses provide details of the various protections built into the proceedings.
We have dwelt pretty constantly on the major criminal who is, obviously, our main target, but we must not forget the smaller lifestyle criminals whose operations affect our constituents. They are often on the receiving, or rather the giving, end of smaller, but hurtful crimes committed against them. They are anxious that our legislation also deals with such criminals. We are after those perpetrators of remunerative crime as well as the major criminals.
We have removed the £10,000 qualification figure. The court will be allowed, on occasions when it feels it to be necessary, to take action and to confiscate the proceeds of smaller crimes. That is the balance that we have been seeking to achieve. I hope that the House will see the amendment in that light and that it will accept it.

Amendment agreed to.

Sir John Hannam: I beg to move amendment No. 3, in page 3, line 29, leave out 'both' and insert 'all'.

Madam Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to discuss also the following amendments: No. 4, in line 32, leave out 'and' and insert—
'( ) it is an offence which was committed after the commencement of section 2 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 1995; and'.

No. 14, in clause 16, page 23, line 7, leave out subsections (5) to (7) and insert—
'(5) Section 1 above shall not apply in the case of any proceedings against any person where that person is convicted in those proceedings of an offence which was committed before the commencement of that section.
(6) Sections 8(1) and 9 above shall not apply where the offence, or any of the offences, in respect of which the confiscation order was made was committed before the commencement of section 1 above.'

Sir John Hannam: The amendments deal with an important point. They are intended to secure the Bill


against a possible challenge under article 7 of the European convention on human rights which prohibits the imposition of a heavier criminal penalty than could have been imposed when the offences took place. The amendments take account of the recent judgments of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Peter Welch. It was held that the confiscation order under drug trafficking legislation was a heavier penalty.
The amendments provide that the enhanced confiscation orders envisaged under the Bill will apply only when the offences in respect of which such orders are made are committed after commencement. I am sure that hon. Members will understand that it has been necessary to consult widely and closely with the Government on the implications for the Bill of the recent judgment by the European Court of Human Rights in the case of the convicted drug trafficker, Peter Welch. It would be appropriate for me to look to my hon. Friend the Minister to inform the House about the detailed background to the case of Mr. Welch.
In general terms, however, the amendments are intended to ensure that the provisions are, as far as possible, protected against an application similar to that made by Mr. Welch under article 7 of the European convention. In other words, the intention is to ensure that the Bill, when it comes into force, will not impose a penalty on the defendant that is heavier than that which could have been applied before the Act came into force. That was the key element of the European judgment. I commend the amendments to the House.

Mrs. Roche: As the hon. Member for Exeter has stated, the amendments are intended to take into account the Welch case. As I am sure hon. Members will recall, Welch won and Britain, unfortunately, lost the case in the European Court of Human Rights on what I consider to be a technicality. Britain was ruled to have penalised Welch, who was convicted of serious drugs offences, by making a confiscation order under the Drug Trafficking Offences Act 1986 despite the fact that his crimes were committed before the Act came into force. Article 7 of the European convention on human rights provides that no one convicted of a crime shall suffer a higher penalty than one applicable at the time the offence was committed.
Britain argued, rightly in my view and in that of my hon. Friends, that a confiscation order was a method of recovering ill-gotten gains, not a penalty and, therefore, that the law could be applied retrospectively. Unfortunately, that line of argument did not gain favour with the court.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Warwickshire, North (Mr. O'Brien), who pointed out in Committee that the Bill might fall foul of the court's decision. He was right, and it is also right that the hon. Member for Exeter has gone away, consulted and come back with the amendments.
I regard the European Court of Human Right's ruling as extremely bad and unfortunate. As the shadow Home Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), said at the time, the decision was alarming. He said:
This decision is a bad one, which the British public will find almost impossible to understand. It is entirely right that those who profit from drugs ought to be hit in their pockets.

The amendments are necessary to ensure that once this important Bill is enacted, as we hope it will be, it is not challenged, but we should continue to point out that we are talking not about penalties—much though some of our language, when we talk about the life-style criminal, may imply that—but about recovery of assets. We ought to continue talking in that vein, because that is what the Bill is all about.
There are no additional penalties; we are simply recovering ill-gotten gains from people who through their crimes have gained substantial amounts of money and property. That is what the legislation is all about, so it is right that we continue to stress that fact. However, we must make sure that the Bill is not open to challenge; therefore, the hon. Member for Exeter has the Opposition's full support for his amendments.

Mr. Maclean: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter for tabling the amendments, and I shall certainly assist him by taking the opportunity to set out the Government's views. Like many of Her Majesty's subjects, and like the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green and many other hon. Members, the Government learnt, with considerable dismay, of the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in the Peter Welch case.
As the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green said, the court came to the wrong judgment on a technicality. I can only conclude that it was a pretty cockeyed judgment. I assure the House that, although we support the amendments to ensure that the measures in the Bill do not fall foul of any potential similar judgment in future, that does not mean that we think that the Government were wrong originally.
The hon. Lady is right to insist that the powers to confiscate the ill-gotten gains of drug traffickers do not constitute a financial penalty. If I wanted to penalise them, I would say that they should spend their lives in prison; that would be the penalty. But taking back their ill-gotten gains would not be part of it. In our view, confiscation is not a penalty. However, the European Court of Human Rights came to a different conclusion, and that is why it is now sensible to amend the Bill.
As hon. Members will know, the Government have introduced legislation promptly since 1986 to enable the courts effectively to confiscate the proceeds from those who traffic in drugs. Our legislation has been praised by other countries, and has often been used or adapted as a model for other countries' drug trafficking laws. Our laws are tough, and deliberately so. It is therefore most unfortunate that the European Court of Human Rights did not feel able to accept the United Kingdom's reasons as to why a contravention of article 7 of the European convention on human rights had not occurred in the Welch case.
With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall explain the background to the case in some detail so that there can be no misconceptions by those outside or those who report our proceedings today. The power to make a confiscation order under part VI of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 is based in some respects on the Drug Trafficking Offences Act 1986, now consolidated in the Drug Trafficking Act 1994. Both statutes enable a confiscation order to be imposed on anybody charged after commencement of the legislation, even where the offences that led to the charges were committed before the legislation came into force.
The inevitable consequences of the present provisions in the Acts that I have mentioned are that a few—I stress that there are only a few—cases will have arisen in which a person was charged after the confiscation legislation came into force and a confiscation order was made on the basis of offences committed before commencement.
I understand that when the 1986 and the 1988 Acts were introduced, my predecessors were mindful of the provisions of article 7, and had no desire to violate it. However, the view was taken that the purpose of the confiscation order is not to punish offenders but to deprive them of the property that they should never have had in the first place.
In that light, it was considered that the confiscation legislation did not involve the imposition of a retrospective criminal penalty, and that its propositions accorded fully with article 7. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green for stating that the Opposition entirely agree with that. I am always slightly nervous when I find the Opposition in agreement with me, and myself welcoming the Opposition's agreement, but on this occasion our unity is strength.
For the reasons that I have explained, we did not believe that confiscation of ill-gotten gains was a retrospective criminal penalty. That was reasonably considered by the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg. Welch committed drug trafficking offences in 1986, before commencement of the Drug Trafficking Offences Act 1986. Some of the charges against him were not laid until 1987, however, by which time the legislation had come into force, with the result that when he was convicted in 1988 the court rightly proceeded to make a confiscation order against him.
The European Court of Human Rights considered that in the particular circumstances of Welch's case the confiscation order imposed on him in 1988 was a penalty, and that that penalty was heavier than was available when the offences were committed in 1986. As a result, according to the court, there had been a violation of article 7 of the convention.
In reaching that conclusion the European Court emphasised four principal characteristics of a confiscation order in England and Wales, which, in its opinion, tended to point to the penal nature of the measure. Those four characteristics were: the assumptions provided for by the legislation as to the illicit origin of the offender's property; the fact that confiscation orders are calculated according to gross proceeds, as opposed to net profits; the role of imprisonment in default in enforcement of confiscation orders; and proportionality—the possibility of a relationship between the extent of the order and the degree of the offender's guilt.
Some of those characteristics apply also to confiscation orders under part VI of the Criminal Justice Act 1988, both in its original form and as amended by the Bill. I have reached the conclusion that a confiscation order under part VI of that Act might also be regarded by the European Court of Human Rights as a penalty. Consequently, the new provisions in the Bill may result in the creation of a heavier penalty than is available at present.
As it currently stands, the Bill contains the same commencement provision as earlier confiscation statutes and it gives courts the power specifically mentioned by the European Court of Human Rights to make the assumptions, which is not currently available under part

VI of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. One cannot therefore exclude the possibility that certain provisions of the Bill will create a heavier penalty than would currently be imposed, and that that penalty may be imposed in a few cases where proceedings are instituted after the Bill comes into force but where the offences were committed beforehand.
My hon. Friend the Member for Exeter was right to table amendments to deal with the issue, and the Government support them. His amendments will ensure that any provisions in the Bill that might give rise to a heavier penalty will apply only where offences with which a person has been charged are committed after commencement. Amendment Nos. 2 and 3 specifically prevent the assumptions from being made unless all the qualifying offences for both triggers are committed after commencement.
12.30 pm
Amendment No. 13 is directed at the provision abolishing the £10,000 limit. Hon. Members will recall that a confiscation order cannot be made at all at present under part VI of the Criminal Justice Act unless the defendant's benefit and the amount of realisable property available for confiscation both exceed £10,000. For the purposes of article 7 of the European convention, a confiscation order cannot be regarded as available in such cases at present. Therefore, the same risk of violation arises as with the triggering offences that attract the assumptions. The provisions of clause 1, which provide for the abolition of the £10,000 limit, will therefore apply only where a person has been convicted of offences committed after commencement.
Amendment No. 14, to clauses 8(1) and 9, relates to the provisions on imprisonment in default and the addition of interest to unpaid confiscation orders. A confiscation order will continue to be expunged by the service of imprisonment in default unless the offences in respect of which the order was made are committed after commencement. Similarly, interest will not be added to a confiscation order unless the offences leading to the order were committed after commencement.
I apologise for making such a lengthy intervention, but it is important that the Government's position on this matter is made clear. I thank the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green for her support for the amendments, which will protect the Bill. Having heard the Government's views on the extraordinary judgment by the Strasbourg court, I hope that the House will my support hon. Friend's amendment.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendment made: No. 4, in page 3, line 32, leave out 'and' and insert—
'( ) it is an offence which was committed after the commencement of section 2 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 1995; and'.—[Mr. Maclean.]

Sir John Hannam: I beg to move amendment No. 5, in page 3, line 46, leave out from 'court' to 'in' in line 1 on page 4 and insert—

'(i) to be held by the defendant at the date of conviction or at any time in the period between that date and the determination in question, or


(ii) to have been transferred to him at any time since the beginning of the relevant period,
was received by him, at the earliest time when he appears to the court to have held it, as a result of or'.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): With this, it will be convenient to discuss also the following amendments: No. 6, in page 4, line 3, leave out from 'his' to 'in' in line 4 and insert
'since the beginning of the relevant period was met out of payments received by him as a result of or'.

No. 7, in page 4, line 35, after 'section', insert—
' "the date of conviction" means—

(a) in a case not falling within paragraph (b) below, the date on which the defendant is convicted of the offence in question, or
(b) where he is convicted of that offence and one or more other offences in the proceedings in question and those convictions are not all on the same date, the date of the latest of those convictions;'.

No. 8, in clause 5, page 8, line 10, after 'apply' insert
'(subject to subsection (8A) below)'.

No. 9, in line 13, at end insert—
'(8A) For the purposes of any determination to which section 72AA above applies by virtue of subsection (8) above, none of the assumptions specified in subsection (4) of that section shall be made in relation to any property unless it is property held by or transferred to the defendant before the time when he was sentenced or otherwise dealt with in the case in question.'

No. 10, in clause 6, page 9, line 47, after 'apply' insert
'(subject to subsection (6A) below)'.

No. 11, in line 50, at end insert—
'(6A) For the purposes of any determination under or for the purposes of subsection (3) above to which section 72AA above applies, none of the assumptions specified in subsection (4) of that section shall be made in relation to any property unless it is property held by or transferred to the defendant before the time when he was sentenced or otherwise dealt with in the case in question.'

No. 12, in clause 7, page 11, line 1, at beginning insert
'subject to subsection (3A) below,'.

No. 13, in line 18, at end insert—
'(3A) Where—

(a) the court is under a duty to make a fresh determination for the purposes of subsection (3)(a) above in any case, and
(b) that case is a case to which section 72AA above applies,

the court shall not have power, in determining any amounts for those purposes, to make any of the assumptions specified in subsection (4) of that section in relation to any property unless it is property held by or transferred to the defendant before the time when he was sentenced or otherwise dealt with in the case in question.'

Sir John Hannam: As the Bill stands at present, a court is permitted to assume that property that has passed through a defendant's hands in the past six years has come from crime. The purpose of the amendments is to permit a court to make a further assumption that property held by the defendant has also come from crime.
The amendment brings the assumptions in the Bill fully into line with those in the drug trafficking legislation. I should mention that the Bill as originally drafted reproduces three of the four assumptions provided for in

the drug trafficking legislation. In so doing, it allows the court to look only at property that has been transferred to or spent by the defendant in the past six years.
The other assumption in the drug trafficking legislation—that property held by the defendant has come from crime—is presently omitted from this legislation on the principle that the existing assumptions are sufficient to allow the courts to confiscate the proceeds following a continuing course of criminal conduct. The courts should now have the power to make that fourth assumption provided for in the drug trafficking legislation.
If the provision is omitted, the result might be that proceeds evade confiscation. For example, there will be cases where property can easily be shown to be held by a defendant at the time described in the amendment where there will be no trace of transfers or expenditure by the defendant in the past six years. For example, a defendant may own a large manor house and estate yet have been technically unemployed for several years. The court can assume that that property has come from crime, unless the defendant can show to the court's satisfaction that he acquired that manor house legitimately. We anticipate that the court will use that assumption only in particularly serious cases.
Amendment Nos. 7 to 13 are technical amendments which are consequential on the new provisions. Their main purpose is to ensure that in the revaluation of cases provided for in clauses 5 to 7 the court assumes that property held by or transferred by the defendant came from crime only if that property was held or transferred before sentence. That is a sensible safeguard, arid I commend the amendments to the House.

Mrs. Roche: The amendment is in the nature of a tidying-up measure. It brings the Bill into line with the drug trafficking legislation. It seems entirely right that, if the prosecuting authorities can make assumptions that lead to certain conclusions about the habits of life-style criminals, they should not be stopped there but should be allowed to continue. The amendments would allow the court to assume that property held by a defendant at the time of his or her conviction or at any time up to the time of the court's final determination have indeed come from crime. I understand from the hon. Member for Exeter that that is the intention of this group of amendments. If that is so, they certainly have our full support.
We can all envisage circumstances in which proceedings take place and property is mysteriously disposed of during the trial, at the time of conviction or at the time of sentence. The property is no longer there. If it is a fairly complex matter, as some of these matters are, some time may elapse between the commencement of criminal proceedings and the court's final determination. It would surely be entirely wrong that the court could not look back at that period.
I have one question which may well be for the Minister to answer. Given that this is such an obvious measure, why was it not in the Bill in the first place? I accept that we live in an imperfect world and that we always have to consider human fallibility, but it seems that this is one measure that could have been taken in the first place as it brings the Bill into line with previous legislation.

Mr. Maclean: The amendments will strengthen the assumptions that the court can make about the illegal origin of the defendant's property. As the Bill stands, the court will be able to assume that only property that passed


through the defendant's hands in the six years before the institution of proceedings came from crime. The amendments will enable the court to assume that property held by the defendant at the time of his conviction or at any time thereafter up to the time of the court's determination has also come from crime. The amendments bring the assumptions in the Proceeds of Crime Bill into line with the drug trafficking legislation.
The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green asked me a pertinent point. She will be aware that the design of the Bill is slightly different from other legislation. The aim was to deal with life-style criminals. That is why we picked the trigger four rather than the trigger two or no trigger at all. When we made legislation dealing with a different type of criminal and sought to take the proceeds of life-style criminals, we made parts of it slightly different. That seemed appropriate at the time. I accept responsibility. Having looked at the matter again, I, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter, take the credit for having the wisdom to bring the Bill more into line with the drug trafficking legislation. It is important that we make those changes.
I was impressed when I visited recently the south-east regional crime squad and met the fantastic police officers who work on serious crime. In one case, a person has now been convicted and awaits sentence. He last came to the attention of the police officially when he was released from prison for robbery in 1979. He came out of prison apparently without any assets and went back to a small council flat. Since then, he has had no convictions whatever. It looks as if, up to his conviction a few weeks ago for serious drug offences, his assets have increased to half a dozen mansions scattered over south-east England. I hope that, as it is drug trafficking legislation, even if he is charged with only one offence, which he has not been—I believe that he has been charged with a few—if the prosecution so wishes and the court makes the assumption, it will be possible to get at all his assets.
For some of these life-style robbers there is a very long gap between convictions. Some of my hon. Friends have pressed me to extend the six-year period to 10 or 15 years. Again, a judgment has to be made, and that might be going back a little too far.
Amendment No. 7 defines "the date of conviction" for the purpose of clause 2 and is necessary because the new assumption about property held by the defendant considers property held at the time of conviction or thereafter and not at the time that proceedings are instituted. Before the amendment, the Bill considered only property transferred to a defendant before the institution of proceedings or any expenditure in the relevant period.
The amendments to clauses 5, 6 and 7 are also technical and consequential on the new assumption that has been added to clause 2. That clause, as amended, could have an unfair effect in revaluation cases, since the court without a compensating amendment would be able to assume that property held by the defendant between conviction and the revaluation is the proceeds of crime. In revaluation cases, the intention is that the court should be able to make the assumptions in respect of property received by a defendant before conviction and should also be able to take into account property received by the defendant after conviction. Where property is received by the defendant after conviction, it must be demonstrated that the property

in question was received from relevant criminal conduct carried out before conviction. The court should not simply be able to assume that it was.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter explained, the amendments will bring the assumptions provided for in the Bill fully into line with those in the drug trafficking legislation and, for those reasons, his amendments have the Government's full support.

Amendment agreed to.

Amendments made: No. 6, in page 4, line 3, leave out from 'his' to 'in' in line 4 and insert
'since the beginning of the relevant period was met out of payments received by him as a result of or'.

No. 7, in line 35, after 'section', insert—
' "the date of conviction" means—

(a) in a case not falling within paragraph (b) below, the date on which the defendant is convicted of the offence in question, or
(b) where he is convicted of that offence and one or more other offences in the proceedings in question and those convictions are not all on the same date, the date of the latest of those convictions;'.—[Sir John Hannam.]

Clause 5

REVIEW OF CASES WHERE PROCEEDS OF CRIME NOT ASSESSED

Amendments made: No. 8, in page 8, line 10, after 'apply' insert
'(subject to subsection (8A) below)'.

No. 9, in line 13, at end insert—
'(8A) For the purposes of any determination to which section 72AA above applies by virtue of subsection (8) above, none of the assumptions specified in subsection (4) of that section shall be made in relation to any property unless it is property held by or transferred to the defendant before the time when he was sentenced or otherwise dealt with in the case in question.'—[Sir John Hannam.]

Clause 6

REVISION OF ASSESSMENT OF PROCEEDS OF CRIME

Amendments made: No. 10, in page 9, line 47, after 'apply' insert
'(subject to subsection (6A) below)'.

No. 11, in line 50, at end insert—
'(6A) For the purposes of any determination under or for the purposes of subsection (3) above to which section 72AA above applies, none of the assumptions specified in subsection (4) of that section shall be made in relation to any property unless it is property held by or transferred to the defendant before the time when he was sentenced or otherwise dealt with in the case in question.'—[Sir John Hannam.]

Clause 7

REVISION OF ASSESSMENT OF AMOUNT TO BE RECOVERED

Amendments made: No. 12, in page 11, line 1, at beginning insert
'subject to subsection (3A) below,'.

No. 13, in line 18, at end insert—
'(3A) Where—

(a) the court is under a duty to make a fresh determination for the purposes of subsection (3)(a) above in any case, and


(b) that case is a case to which section 72AA above applies,

the court shall not have power, in determining any amounts for those purposes, to make any of the assumptions specified in subsection (4) of that section in relation to any property unless it is property held by or transferred to the defendant before the time when he was sentenced or otherwise dealt with in the case in question.'—[Sir John Hannam.]

Clause 16

SHORT TITLE, INTERPRETATION, COMMENCEMENT AND EXTENT

Amendment made: No. 14, in page 23, line 7, leave out subsections (5) to (7) and insert—
'(5) Section 1 above shall not apply in the case of any proceedings against any person where that person is convicted in those proceedings of an offence which was committed before the commencement of that section.
(6) Sections 8(1) and 9 above shall not apply where the offence, or any of the offences, in respect of which the confiscation order was made was committed before the commencement of section 1 above.'—[Sir John Hannam.]

Order for Third Reading read.

Sir John Hannam: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I am proud to have had the opportunity to guide the Bill through the House. As I embark on what may for me be the last lap, I must express my thanks for all the kind support that I have received from both sides of the House throughout proceedings on the Bill. It has made the journey thus far a good deal smoother than it might otherwise have been, since the subject matter of the Bill is not entirely straightforward, as I would be the first to admit. Hon. Members have commented on the complexity of what appears, on the face of it, to be quite a simple Bill.
The Bill has not emerged entirely unscathed from its passage through the House and I will comment briefly on the amendments. First, we changed the long title to allow for clause 14 to be inserted.
Clause 1 amends the Criminal Justice Act 1988 substantially and has not been amended. Clause 2, which deals with the confiscation of the proceeds from persistent offending, is at the heart of the Bill and has been much debated, especially in Committee. It has been amended so that the court can apply the assumptions where the defendant is convicted of only two relevant offences in the same proceedings instead of four. The assumptions have also been strengthened and brought into line with drug trafficking legislation.
Clause 2 has also been amended so that it will apply only when the triggering offences are committed after the Bill comes into force. That amendment is intended to ensure that it conforms with our international obligation and takes into account the decision of the European Court of Human Rights which was issued immediately after the Second Reading.
Clauses 3 and 4 are unaltered. We have made technical amendments to clauses 5, 6 and 7. Those are consequential on the new provision in clause 2, which allows the court to assume that property held by the defendant has come from crime. The purpose of those technical amendments is to prevent unfairness, about which we have been anxious during the Bill's passage.
Clauses 8 to 13 are unchanged. Clause 14 is the new clause that amends the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act 1989 and the Criminal Justice (International Co-operation) Act 1990. It was introduced to provide a more effective enforcement of external forfeiture orders. Clause 15—formerly clause 14—has not been amended. Clause 16—formerly clause 15—now provides that certain sections of the legislation will apply only where offences are committed after it comes into force. That is a result of the Welch case in the European Court of Human Rights. It has also been amended consequential to clause 14.
As hon. Members will see, the changes that we have made have not affected the Bill's basic structure and thrust. The Bill is now even better and more valuable than when it started. It sets out to strengthen our protection against criminal conduct by extending the courts' powers to confiscate the accrued gains of life-style criminals in all types of crime. If crime is seen to pay, there is a continuing incentive to commit offences, even with the risk of a prison sentence. Whether a life-style criminal is engaged in theft, fraud, pornography or whatever, if he or she stashes away and launders the proceeds of crime ready to pick them up after completing a sentence, that criminal will be deterred and victims reassured that justice prevails only if we seize those illegally gained assets.
By removing the £10,000 threshold, abolishing the expunging of confiscation through a prison term, and providing the fullest powers of search and investigation of criminal assets, the Bill takes the important steps needed to win the fight against crime. I am therefore proud to commend the Bill to the House.

Mr. Harry Barnes: The House has never been divided on the Bill. Although we have had a number of votes, the House has generally accepted the amendments put forward. Throughout Second Reading and in Committee we have never disputed a matter to the point of dividing the House. However, the Bill has changed and the hon.*Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) has done a service to the House in introducing this measure. I am still doubtful about why a private Member's Bill was necessary, given that the Government support the measure. Nevertheless, it is the hon. Gentleman's choice and the Bill has undergone various procedures.
What upsets me about our procedures is that Standing Committee C, which is the only Standing Committee that can discuss private Members' Bills, spent three weeks discussing this Bill. I know that time must be spent discussing Bills and that, even if probing amendments are tabled, they serve a purpose and help to shape a Bill's development, but a sittings motion could have been passed to allow the Bill to go through Committee much more quickly.
The Committee's third sitting lasted for 18 minutes. Those 18 minutes took up an entire sitting day and presented a grave problem for hon. Members with important Bills further down the queue. The hon. Member for Exeter is aware of what one of those important Bills is, because he has supported it. It is the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill, although that is not the only important Bill in the queue.

Sir John Hannam: It is fair to point out that the Committee's third sitting would have lasted much longer


if the important new clause, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale was due to present, had been proceeded with and not withdrawn on that day. It could have been a long debate because, as we have heard this morning, that new clause dealt with an important matter. The hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) should understand that, although that sitting finished within half an hour, it was expected to last much longer.

Mr. Barnes: I accept what the hon. Gentleman has said. I nevertheless consider that I am entitled to feel aggrieved about procedures that have been followed, and especially about the work in Standing Committee C. It is not merely the Proceeds of Crime Bill that has taken longer than it should have done in that Committee when there was no dispute, and when there was adequate agreement between parties on both sides of the House to seek to progress with the measure.
I wanted to place those matters on record, rather than to say anything about the nature of the measure before us. I appreciate that the House has reached agreement about the measure and there will obviously be no Division on Third Reading.

Mr. Merchant: I shall speak briefly in support of the Third Reading of the Bill.
First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) on bringing the Bill to the House and successfully piloting it through its stages. He deserves great credit for doing so, and I hope that he receives that credit publicly, because that tough piece of legislation obviously builds on the public's expectations of action.
Confiscation is tough in itself, but confiscation of assets acquired over a period, which are presumed to have been the proceeds of crime, is an even tougher step to take, although it is absolutely right. It should be borne in mind that the Bill incorporates in its clauses proper defences for people who can show that those assets were not illicitly gained.
It is perhaps a sign of the times that that hardening of the law is so widely accepted. Time was when such a suggestion would have produced a series of objections from all quarters. It struck me that today even the Opposition were beginning to sound like parts of a Conservative party conference.

Mrs. Roche: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is no new departure? If he casts his mind back, he may recall that the previous legislation on forfeiture and confiscation received the whole-hearted support of the Opposition, especially as regards the proceeds of the dreadful trade in drugs.

Mr. Merchant: I am not so certain that the Opposition were always so keen on fighting crime as they now purport to be, but I am happy to accept the hon. Lady's remarks about the drugs trade at least.
Increasing crime has created a massive public backlash against a perceived weakness of the law and the courts, and that anger is understandable. It is caused not only by fear but by the juxtaposition of those who live law-abiding lives and note what gains they receive and those who appear to be getting away with a life of crime and obtaining much greater gains.
There has been a demand for tougher punishment and a demand to ensure that people do not profit from the proceeds of crime. Other legislation tackles the first issue, but the second issue is adequately and thoroughly tackled by the Bill. It is not over-simplistic, and it is important not to be so in tackling crime.
However, the Bill precisely tackles the problem. It is not about the yob who gets drunk and thumps someone; it is not about a teenager with a personality difficulty who goes astray; it is not about the pathetic habitual criminal who finds that he cannot get away from a life of crime. The Bill concentrates on the professional criminal. It concentrates on the successful crook and fraudster. It concentrates on the racketeers, on the people who cock a snook at society and in many cases acquire massive fortunes—large houses, pools, yachts, foreign villas—who live on the in my view rather inaptly named, "costa crime".
Those criminals may try to live an upper class life-style, but they do not practice upper class crime; they involve themselves in the violence and intimidation that one encounters at all levels of the criminal fraternity. The Bill strikes against some of the most evil gangsters, against the cold and calculated decisions made by some to profit from crime, against the Mr. Bigs, against the criminal fraternities and organisations and especially against international crime. The hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) made a good speech about that type of crime on Second Reading and it is regrettable that it is becoming ever more prevalent in Britain. We can see the effects of it in Itaiy and the United States.
I am delighted that the Bill has reached its Third Reading. I hope that it will pass into law quickly, so that proper measures can be taken against those who have profited from crime. Punishment is important, but it is not enough. It is also important to make criminals realise that the price of their behaviour is not worth paying. They should realise that they will be caught up with eventually and that crime does not pay. The Bill will ensure that that happens and for that reason I am happy to support it.

Mrs. Roche: It will not surprise hon. Members to learn that I welcome the Bill, as I did its Second Reading. My hon. Friends and I also supported it in Committee. It is right that life-style criminals should not profit from their gains and that legislation should be brought into line with that currently enforced against drug traffickers.
This is a particularly topical week in which to have the Bill's Third Reading, because we have learnt that the risk of becoming a victim of a home burglary has trebled from one in 32 in 1979 to one in 11 last year. Similarly, a person's risk of being a victim of violent crime now stands at one in 64 whereas it was one in 213 in 1979. Unfortunately for my constituents, the figures for London are even more alarming. Only yesterday the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys revealed huge increases in burglaries from its general household survey which, unlike Home Office statistics, collects the details on all burglaries whether or not they are reported.
The Opposition believe that the criminals who burgle our constituents' homes and jeopardise their safety should not profit from their actions. The hon. Member for Beckenham (Mr. Merchant) should note that it is right to say that the Labour party is not only tough on crime and


the causes of crime, but on the proceeds of crime. We have demonstrated that by our continuing support for Bills of this nature.
One of the concerns that I raised on Second Reading was that the proceeds of confiscation should be used to fund crime prevention. Where possible, the money that is confiscated should go back to the victims—those who lost a great deal through the crimes of others. Where that is not possible—in many instances, due to the passage of time, it is almost impossible to identify the victims—the money should go towards crime prevention. As I said on Second Reading, just 0.2 per cent.—a tiny proportion—of Britain's spending on the criminal justice system is devoted to crime prevention. Numerous reports have called for better crime prevention policies and many schemes cannot be implemented due to lack of funding.
This week, the Government announced 120 successful bids for closed circuit television schemes. That is welcome, but only seven of the excellent bids from London were successful. The unsuccessful bids included one for a CCTV scheme for Wood Green high road. It had the support of Wood Green traders and businesses, Hornsey police and Haringey council in my constituency. I hope that hon. Members will forgive me for making a special plea for that excellent scheme. We are still absolutely flabbergasted that it was unsuccessful and do not understand why. It is, however, one of many worthwhile schemes that should be supported. It would be fine and fitting to think that money confiscated from criminals as the proceeds of crime could be rechannelled to prevent further crimes.
I have already spoken about a particular CCTV bid in my constituency, but I also know that there is great concern among the Jewish community, which also put in bids for CCTV for Jewish schools. Unfortunately, I believe that not one of those bids was successful. As hon. Members will know, unfortunately there are many security fears within the Jewish community. Many Jewish schools, with the encouragement of the police, put in bids that were unsuccessful. I should declare an interest because I was a pupil at a Jewish school which, while I was there, had occasional security alerts and risks.
We are coming to the end of this stage of the Bill's passage through this House, so it is right to congratulate the hon. Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) on the courteous and expert way in which he handled the Bill in Committee. I am a comparatively new Member of Parliament, but I believe that he has followed the very best traditions of the House. On behalf of the Opposition, I offer him our warmest congratulations. I also pay tribute to the sponsors of the Bill, including my hon. Friends the Members for Stockport (Ms Coffey) and for Cambridge (Mrs. Campbell), who served in Committee. We wish the Bill well in its passage through the other place.
G. K. Chesterton once said that it was not true to say that thieves had no respect for property. He felt that they had a great respect for property: they respected it so much that they wanted it to become their own property so that they could more perfectly respect it. The Bill's purpose is to thwart that aim and we support anything that can achieve that purpose.
There is a well-known adage that crime does not pay. Unfortunately, for too many criminals crime pays very well indeed. The Opposition are happy to support a Bill

to ensure that wealth accumulated through crime does not profit the perpetrators. We believe that in the 20th century criminals should not be rewarded for their crimes. For that reason, we give our wholehearted support to the Bill.

Mr. Maclean: I reiterate the Government's gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Sir J. Hannam) for agreeing to take forward this important Bill. I know that that gratitude is shared by the whole House and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Mrs. Roche) for the warm tribute that she paid to my hon. Friend.
My hon. Friend has remained unfailingly calm and considerate in the face of what he rather generously described as provisions which are not entirely straightforward. The concept of what we wanted to do, and what my hon. Friend has achieved in his Bill, is very straightforward. However, because of the nature of the amendments that we have to make to previous legislation, the Bill is very complex. Indeed, I am relieved that I did not have to take the lead on it. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the masterful way that he took the lead and for his unfailing courtesy during the Committee stage.
I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes). He knows that in every private Member's Bill Committee there will be Back Benchers, from both sides, with their own agendas. However, if he looks at the Committee proceedings he will recognise that most of the probing amendments that were tabled have ended up being accepted because they were eminently sensible. Contrary to what may happen with some private Member's Bills, where a number of spurious amendments are tabled but never accepted, most of the amendments tabled to this Bill were accepted.
The Bill was given a thorough scrutiny in Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Exeter was right to point out that it is only because our hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) twisted our arms for a debate on the Floor of the House today, and because I agreed seriously to consider our statutory instrument making power, that our hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale agreed to curtail our discussions in Committee last Wednesday. The improvements that have been made to the Bill should ensure that enforcement authorities in the courts have at their disposal some worthwhile powers to use against life-style criminals. I want briefly to dwell on those important changes.
We have given wholehearted approval to the amendment from my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter which lowers the first trigger in clause 2 from four convictions in the same proceedings to two. Let no one underestimate that change. It represents a substantial strengthening. We agree with hon. Members who have drawn attention to the fact that convictions for four offences in the same proceedings may mean that the sort of criminals that we are all aiming at will escape. A defendant may, for example, be convicted of only three offences in the same proceedings; that, to say the least, would be most unfortunate.
Amendments have proved necessary as a result of the European Court of Human Rights judgment in the Welch case. The Government agreed to those amendments with considerable reluctance, but I reassure the House—this is the important point—that the


substantive provisions of the Bill remain unaffected by those amendments. The assumptions in clause 2 will apply, looking back six years from the date of the offender's conviction. All that the amendments do is to provide that the triggering offences must have been committed after the commencement of the Bill.
It is worth reflecting on some of the clauses that have not been debated today—for example, clauses 3 and 4, which provide for statements by both the prosecution and the defendant. That will do much to ensure that confiscation orders are made for the true value of the benefits that have been obtained. The police will welcome the new powers in clauses 12 and 13. Both in Committee and in the House today, hon. Members have mentioned how adept criminals are at concealing and laundering the proceeds of their crimes. It is vital that the police are given the same powers to obtain financial information from banks, and to have search and seizure powers in relation to the proceeds of crime generally. The law allows them to do that in relation to the proceeds of drug trafficking.
All too often, despite all the information available to it, the court manages to confiscate only the tip of the iceberg. All too often, as the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green rightly said, a crime is seen to pay. It is important that the criminal should not be able to conceal the proceeds and get away with it. Clauses 5, 6 and 7 will give prosecutors new powers to go back to court and seek a revaluation of the proceeds if new evidence comes to light.
It only remains for me to repeat that the Government are deeply grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter for steering the Bill so ably through Committee and through the House today, for listening to my hon. Friends, and for making sensible amendments to the Bill. Last year, various sections of the big Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 received much media attention. I do not think that the media or, perhaps, my colleagues in the police service have fully realised the extent and effect of the Bill before us today. They may have seen that it was a private Member's Bill and how terribly complex it was, but perhaps failed to pick up how sexy it is deep down.
I hope that, after the Bill returns successfully from another place, becomes an Act of Parliament and begins to bite, a wave of fear will go through the criminal fraternity. It will say, "Where on earth did this measure come from? Who invented this? We didn't know this went through." My hon. Friend will take the credit for that. It is a pity that he cannot also take a percentage of the assets belonging to the individuals who have been robbed and burgled and that we shall recover, as it would be a sound investment.
The message should go out from the House today that a powerful weapon has been created in the Bill. That weapon will be used effectively not just against drug traffickers and terrorists—we have provision to do that—but against every criminal who wants to profit from the proceeds of crime. We can get at their assets. We can destroy their life style. The Bill will ensure that, for a great many of the nastiest criminals in society, crime does not pay. I commend it wholeheartedly to the House and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter yet again.

Bill read the Third time, and passed.

Regulation of Diet Industry Bill

Order for Second Reading read.

Mrs. Alice Mahon: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
It is important to put it on record that when I introduced the Bill last year I was completely overwhelmed by the response and the support that it received. I received great support from the media, national newspapers, women's magazines, the medical profession, eminent nutritionists such as Dr. Tom Sanders of King's college, the Advertising Standards Authority, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and an active organisation called Diet Breakers founded by Mary Evans Young. Most important, I was also bowled over by the support that I received from thousands of women, and a few men, who have tried dieting, sometimes for years, and have either poured money down the drain and regained any weight lost after a couple of years or damaged their health, sometimes seriously.
It was the health hazards of dieting that first caught my interest as a Member of Parliament. A few years ago, two young girls and their mothers visited me at one of my weekly advice surgeries. Both girls, who were very young, were suffering from serious slimming illnesses. One of them had decided when she was 11 years old that she was too fat. She wanted to look like the skinny models on the catwalks and in girls' and women's magazines. She set about starving herself to fulfil her aim. She did so secretly, without her parents knowing.
For at least two years, her anxious parents fretted about her weight loss, listlessness and mood swings. Only when it was almost too late did they find out what the truth. They then sought help because she was suffering from severe anorexia nervosa. The girl, who is now almost 17 years old, is still ill. She does not have periods and doctors fear for her fertility. There have been many well-publicised extreme cases involving young women who have been slimming. Some have ended in death. I shall deal with slimming diseases in a moment.
Further investigation on my part led to the discovery that we have an epidemic of dieting in the United Kingdom and, indeed, in the western world. In this country, 90 per cent. of women diet at some time in their lives. At any given time, 50 per cent. of women are dieting, including girls as young as seven and eight and women as old as 75.
I also discovered that a multi-million pound diet industry operates in this country—it is worth about £1 billion a year. We spend about six times the gross national product of the Gambia on gimmicks such as patches, tablets and various courses and cures, trying more often than not to be unhealthily thin while many people in the developing world are dying because they do not have enough food and subsequently suffer starvation.
Sadly, many of the people who diet do not need to do so. The vast majority have absolutely no reason to diet. I teamed up with Diet Breakers and Mary Evans Young because I liked their positive approach to the subject. So much about dieting is shrouded in secrecy and misery and depends on people's insecurities. Diet Breakers was like a breath of fresh air. It opposes the diet industry by and large and opposes what it calls the tyranny of thinness


which has gathered so much momentum in this country. Diet Breakers and Dr. Thomas Sanders of Kings college, who wrote the very good book "You Do Not Have To Diet", gave me considerable help when I was drawing up my Bill to regulate the industry. I would like to record my thanks to Mary Evans Young and Tom Sanders.
Mary Evans Young is bringing out a book that I hope will offer help to thousands of women who are going through the misery of dieting. "Diet Breaking: Having It All Without Having To Diet" is an excellent book. It is a fresh approach and full of common sense. Let us hope that many people read it and that the young, especially, have access so it.
My Bill would regulate the diet industry by requiring weight-loss centres to display prominently a health warning that rapid weight loss can be dangerous to health. All weight-loss companies would have to provide consumers with a card which clearly outlines the risk of any rapid weight loss. Anybody selling such products or running a clinic would also have to disclose any additional charges because too often the consumer buys a product and then discovers that extra charges are incurred when the diet programme is devised. There are many cons in the industry.
Most importantly, my Bill would also require that all weight-loss pills, potions and patches are brought under a medicines Act and, of course, that medicines such as amphetamines and amphetamine-type pills are not given to aid slimming. I very much welcome and congratulate the Minister on his press release on 29 March, which was presumably in response to concerns being expressed in the media, by organisations such as Diet Breakers and, indeed, by hon. Members. The Minister said that a move to ban the use of certain amphetamines and amphetamine-type drugs as aids to losing weight would be shortly under way.
The press release says:
The Medicine Control Agency, an executive of the Department of Health, is to start consultations with a view to restricting the use of such drugs, under section 62 of the 1968 Medicines Act, under certain circumstances.
I know that the Minister has taken an interest in the matter. He clearly and rightly describes in his press release what is so wrong when he says that a number of doctors have set up slimming clinics to prescribe amphetamines, which are addictive drugs, as an aid to weight loss.
Such drugs have dramatic and devastating effects when they are dished out to some women. There have been reports, as the Minister said, of people being damaged mentally and physically by the drugs and of them leading to addiction and psychosis. There have also been reports of hair loss, palpitations and other side effects. I welcome the press release. The Minister has taken a positive move and I hope that that ban does not take too long to implement.
I should like to tell the House about some of the many hundreds of letters that I have received since I started looking into the industry and, in particular, into the use of drugs which are dished out like sweeties in some of the clinics to which the Minister referred. I shall not give the name of the person who wrote this letter, but it says:
Dear Mrs. Mahon,
I have been meaning to write to you for some weeks following a report on the BBC news about your involvement in trying to have the slimming business regulated. The enclosed newspaper article can only describe to some extent my experiences in what I can only describe as a year of hell.

That person goes on to describe how she was horrified by the side effects of the pills, which appear, she said,
to be generally well-known among the medical profession",
yet doctors still give them out.
An article from Woman's Journal which my correspondent enclosed talked about experiences similar to her husband's. Woman's Journal also outlines a couple of cases that I think are worth putting on the record. One concerns a woman who was brave enough to give her name—Susan Weeks, aged 34. She was a stone heavier than she would have liked to be. Five years ago, six weeks before her marriage, she decided to lose the extra stone before her wedding day. She saw an advertisement in the yellow pages for a local slimming clinic and she made an appointment. In her words:
I only saw the doctor for a few minutes. He just asked me a few questions, weighed me and gave me two sorts of pills, plus a vitamin supplement and a diet sheet. On the day I married I was the thinnest I'd ever been. I also felt terrible—hypersensitive, panicky and weak. I put it down to stress, but I knew it was the pills and that diet. When I came back from the honeymoon—nearly back to my old weight and feeling really well—I saw the remaining pills and flushed them down the loo.
Other experiences did not end as positively as that.
A well-documented case, which the Daily Mail highlighted fairly well, was that of Christine Malik who died the day after taking pills prescribed to help her lose a few pounds before her holidays. Another woman was not even seen by a doctor before she was given diet pills, although they were a controlled drug described as amphetamine-like and chemically related to ecstasy. As a result, the clinic was searched and two arrests were made. That woman was given the pills although she was not even seen by a doctor. That is an example of the dangerous practice now taking place.
I also put on the record another case which came to me from Mary Evans Young of Diet Breakers as we were collecting evidence and information for the Bill. The case concerns a woman called Mandie who is 5 ft 10 in tall—she is quite a tall woman—and weighs 12 stone. She is 22 and works in a factory. She writes:
My one wish is to be able to forget dieting and stop worrying about my body size. I have been dieting non-stop for as far back as I can remember. My mum has always dieted too, and so after 1 received a few jokes about my size at school, I decided I would follow suit.
I began to get paranoid and one of my earliest memories of how miserable worrying about my body size is quite funny. I was in the junior school (so I was younger than 11) and besotted with horses like many young girls at that age.
She was very much in love with horses. The letter continues:
The walls of my room were covered in horse posters and religiously, every night before I got undressed, I would pull the top two pieces of Blue-Tak from the wall so that the horses' heads faced towards the wall and they couldn't see my body as I undressed! Then, before I got back into bed every poster was put back again. This ritual was repeated for years.
It is really, really sad that a young girl is so obsessed with how she looks and with her image that she resorts to that when she is less than seven years old.
The letter continues:
Until recently, dieting had become just a part of my life. Every Monday I began a new diet. Although I was not huge I didn't like myself and my body because if you are told something often enough, you start to believe it. Anyway, I got more miserable and tried more and more diets. With each one I lost weight initially, but after sticking to it for a short while I put on everything I had lost plus


some more. I hit rock bottom, became very depressed and would cry for no reason at all. Going out became really hard for me as I was ashamed of myself and couldn't bear to be seen in public. Eventually I got some counselling and as a result I have come to realise that my problems stemmed from the pressure on me to be slimmer than my healthy natural body size.
Mandie's experience is the experience of thousands who are daily bombarded with images of unhealthily thin models on the catwalks. Magazines are full of pictures of size 10 women, but we all come in different shapes and sizes; we are not all alike.
When I was young Marilyn Monroe was my role model, and I used to take bottles and bottles of stuff called Weight On in a desperate attempt to put on a few pounds. Later in life I developed gallstones, much to the surprise of my doctors, who said that sufferers were usually people older and fatter than myself. I am pretty sure that all that stuff that I poured into myself contributed to that illness.
So there was pressure even then, although it is far more intense now than when I was younger. A lack of self-esteem and a desire to look like those whom the image-makers portray as beauties makes many young girls dissatisfied with their bodies. And that now applies to boys, too, because sadly the fashion industry is targeting boys. All those advertisements showing boys in slim-fitting jeans are part of that process.
Diet Breakers undertook a survey to establish the patterns of dieting, and asked where the pressure to diet comes from. The survey, which was extremely interesting, covered 516 women, and 45 per cent. of them answered that the pressure came from the media and from the fashion and advertising industries, whereas only 15 per cent. said that it came from doctors.
When asked what part of their bodies they felt most negative about, 25 per cent. said stomach, 15 per cent. thighs and 15 per cent. bottoms. When my Bill of the same name was before the House last year the hon. Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mr. Fabricant) said that the diet industry provided a useful back-up service for the overstretched national health service. The statistics that I have quoted show that argument to be flawed, although well before the survey, common sense also showed that it was flawed.
Those figures show why the diet industry's chief guru, Rosemary Conley, gives her books titles such as "The Hip and Thigh Diet" and "The Flat Stomach Diet". But Mrs. Conley's own health has not always been good. Like me, she has had gallstones, which is a common ailment among constant dieters.
The survey also asked for the reasons why people could not accept themselves as they were. Low self-esteem was mentioned by 32.5 per cent. of respondents. In other words, that multi-million pound industry is exploiting women's low self-esteem by promising them success, not only in losing weight but with the implied new life that is supposed to go with it.
The Diet Breakers survey also asked, "Did your mother diet?" The results show that dieting runs in families. That has been my experience too. People write to me about it, and one woman in particular sticks in my mind. She said that she had stopped going to Weight Watchers because she had had to rethink dramatically about dieting. She had been taking her 11-year-old daughter, who was very slender, with her to Weight Watchers, and had noticed that even she

was becoming interested in losing pounds as a way of life. I found that quite frightening and very honest, and I was pleased that the woman joined Diet Breakers.
Sixty-four per cent. of the respondents aged up to 41 said that their mothers had dieted too, whereas 72 per cent. of respondents aged 60 and over said that their mothers did not diet. That too is an interesting statistic.
Dieting has become an unhealthy national epidemic. We have been encouraged to believe that a diet for losing weight is the same as a healthy diet, but the two are completely different. A healthy diet means being able to enjoy food without feeling guilty. Only then can people develop a well-balanced diet and a healthy lifestyle. Eating what one fancies and stopping when one is full is natural and healthy.
The diet industry, with its gadgets and gimmicks, its meal replacements and low-calorie dinners—we have all seen them—does not teach people to develop a healthy relationship with their bodies and their food. That is why the British Dietetic Association supports my Bill.
Another element of the diet industry rip-off is the so-called "meal replacement" such as biscuits, bars, milk shakes and "healthy" ready-made meals. Those products can cause people to lose weight too quickly, which means a loss of lean tissue and a lowering of the metabolic rate. They can cause people to have poor nutritional value, as most of the products are high in fat and sugar. All the biscuits and bars are low in protein, and we need protein to live for any length of time.
Many of the meal replacements are not significantly lower in calories than many snack foods. They also encourage unhealthy eating habits because of their emphasis on biscuits, sweets and high-fat snacks. They are also enormously expensive, and people are getting ripped off. They are much more expensive than buying fruit and vegetables and having a balanced and healthy diet.
We have also mentioned the diet pill part of the industry, and I am pleased to say that the Royal Pharmaceutical Society—the professional body of pharmacists—supports what I am trying to do. It says that the marketing of products and the claims made for them are a matter of concern. The society believes that the products should be subject to the controls of the marketing of medicinal products.
In addition, the society is concerned about the widespread and inappropriate use of appetite suppressants, and the extent to which these are supplied through slimming clinics to customers who may be unaware of the effects of the medicines. Another young woman who had taken slimming pills told Diet Breakers about what happened to her, and I received similar letters during my campaign.
The young girl said that the first diet pill that she took made her feel dizzy and unwell. She went back to the clinic, and was given a different bottle of pills. These made her hair grow thin and start to fall out. She was worried, stopped taking the pills and returned to the clinic, where it was suggested that she try a third type of diet pill. She took those and her hair regrew, but this time it was permanently grey. She was only 23 years old.
Some 5,000 children in this country are being treated for eating disorders on the NHS. Children as young as seven and eight are dieting and feeling that they are too fat. As legislators and people interested in health, we must


teach children to be positive about their body image. The Department of Health is trying to promote healthy eating in its documents on health, and we must teach children that they can look attractive if they are a different shape from the person sitting next to them, or if they have more weight, are taller or have longer arms. Those differences do not mean that a person cannot be attractive and important.
The all-pervasive arm of the diet industry reaches out. The recent survey by Diet Breakers showed the effect that mothers had on their children, but there is also evidence to show that the attitude gets into the classroom. There are now sponsored slims being held in classrooms, and that is irresponsible. "Home Alone", a children's film recently shown on television, was sponsored by Diet Coke, but healthy children who are getting plenty of exercise and who have a healthy diet do not need Diet Coke. It is the subtle introduction to the diet mentality that is worrying. People are losing their right to be viewed and valued for who they are and for their personality.
On 6 May this year it is international No Dieting Day. I have to give it a plug before I finish my speech. It is important that people get together and support each other. No Dieting Day has now become international. We have contacts with people all over the world who have been on the treadmill of dieting and want to get off or celebrate the fact that they are off it.
People throw the accusation at us that serious slimming diseases such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia are complex and simply dieting does not bring them on. I have done some work on eating disorders. The Eating Disorders Association is made up mainly of parents or people who have suffered slimming illnesses. They all say that all serious slimming illnesses start with people dieting. There may be other causes, although I am not medically qualified to say yes or no. The Eating Disorders Association says:
Exciting, new, and miraculous diets, promising weight loss with minimum effort or discomfort are featured every week in various women's magazines, followed by pictures and recipes for delightful, easy to bake treats. As a result, many women worry continually about what they can and cannot eat and it is not surprising that so many turn to dieting.
Most people with eating disorders start by dieting. They start by reading how they should look and how they should not look.
Rachel Bryant-Waugh, the principal clinical psychologist working on slimming diseases at the Hospital for Sick Children at Great Ormond street has written an excellent article which goes through the complexities of slimming diseases. I do not pretend that such illnesses are caused simply by dieting. She says:
Predisposing background conditions include cultural factors such as the current obsession with slimness … and possibly factors related to family, school or work.
I pay tribute to a woman whose daughter killed herself recently. Her story was in the Mail on Sunday magazine. She wanted to speak out about her daughter Karen's suicide. It must have been incredibly difficult for her to speak out. Mrs. Ros Frewer told her story to the press because she wanted to warn other parents to watch out for such problems. The young woman had been starving herself. She was bulimic. She had seen a GP and a counsellor, but had kept the illness secret. She was a lovely girl with her whole future in front of her.
Mrs. Frewer said:
It's clear that Karen desperately wanted to be thin. In fact, she was an attractive, fashion-conscious girl, who hovered between sizes 12 and 14—a long way from fat, but she couldn't see it.
The image makers got to her. She decided that she could not cope with how she was.
The British Dietetic Association, which supports moves legally to regulate the diet industry, says:
Western society tends to see 'thin as good' encouraging many people, especially women to 'diet' unnecessarily.
It goes on to say how many women diet. It points out that
only 16 per cent. are obese ie have a body mass index of 30 or more. This may be detrimental to their physical and psychological health".
It will be more detrimental to them if they do not go to a doctor and reduce their weight properly. It can positively harm them if they go on extreme diets or use patented slimming medicines or potions. Such medicines are ineffective with someone who has a genuine problem of obesity.
State registered dieticians are well-qualified people. They will tell you that it is a healthy diet that matters. It is not all these gimmicks and quacks.
I cannot sit down without paying tribute to the media. It is most unusual for Members—especially Opposition Members—to pay tribute to newspapers such as The Mail on Sunday, the Daily Mail, The Sun and the Daily Mirror. I must also pay tribute to The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, the Bolton Evening News, the Yorkshire Post and Central Television, Scottish Television and the Kilroy-Silk show. I apologise if I have left out anyone who has mounted a major campaign. In the past few years, all have responsibly looked into clinics and the Jack-the-lads who are peddling all sorts of rubbish and nonsense and highlighted some of the extreme end of the market. We should say congratulations.
Women's Realm, which has been responsible for selling some of the foods in the past, produced an excellent article not long ago, entitled, "Made ill by diet doctors." I have only received one bad report from a newspaper—Maggie Drummond in The Daily Telegraph suggested that I only had half a brain because I was taking this issue seriously. The fact that only one journalist failed to recognise that the issue is serious is not bad going and the press should be congratulated.
The proposals in the Bill are fairly modest. The Minister is going to tackle the most wicked side of the diet industry, but I want to go much further. I might introduce another Bill later this year, as I want to add the provision that anyone offering weight loss or spot reducing services and advertising them to the public should have to register annually with the Department of Health and submit the following information. Such services should be provided by trained and qualified personnel, who also provide counselling as well as weight loss services. Ingredients and nutritional information should be provided for any food, formula or drug products sold or provided as part of a weight-loss programme so that everyone can see what is in them.
If the service has been on offer for a year or more, a record should be kept of the number of clients in the previous year who successfully achieved weight loss according to the programme's goals. Information on the total number of clients served in the previous year should be provided and, in the case of diet clubs, a breakdown


between new members and those rejoining because they have failed. We should also know how many clients have reported medical problems linked to the weight loss service.
Every person, firm or corporation registering pursuant to the legislation would be charged a fee so that the service would not cost the Department of Health anything. The Department should compile the information and make it available to the public in a report every year.
We are going for healthy eating and we recognise that what we eat when we are young often dictates our health in later life. A healthy diet is good preventive medicine and could save the national health service a lot of money. The Department of Health could periodically review the records of firms and corporations advertising weight-loss services, to verify the accuracy of the information submitted. Those aims are fairly moderate and could be worked into another Bill.
The Advertising Standards Authority has tightened its code of practice, which is very welcome, and I was interested to see recently that a company in Birmingham had been fined £15,000 for selling misleading slimming aids. Vitahealth Ltd., which supplies the aids by mail order, was charged with six offences under the Trade Descriptions Act 1968. I am pleased about the fine because there are no miracle pills or slimming cures—I will not go into the worst excesses now as I did so when I moved the Bill. They do not exist. Nothing replaces exercise and healthy eating. We should accept how we feel about ourselves. Fat, thin or indifferent, we all have something to offer.
The fourth international No Dieting Day on 6 May will give us a good opportunity to promote and celebrate good health and self-acceptance. People from Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Norway will participate. The other weekend, I took part in a radio phone-in to a live Australian chat show which was dealing with this matter, and the Australian health department is taking the matter extremely seriously. Common sense recognises that peddling ill health works to the cost of the health service.
We shall hold a press conference in the House of Commons on 3 May; I shall present a further early-day motion, which I hope will have all-party support; and a book by Mary Evans Young will be published on 20 April. So good things are happening. I hope that the Minister will act quickly against the peddlers of misery in slimming clinics. I commend the Second Reading of my Bill to the House.

Lady Olga Maitland: I congratulate the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) on introducing this important Bill. It deals with a matter that has always worried me, and I am delighted that the hon. Lady is acting while we have stood around waving our hands in anguish and concern.
The time has come to stop peddling quack remedies and to bring an end to the neurotic obsession with dieting, which began not in recent years but some 70 years ago. It gathered speed after the memorable phrase by the late Duchess of Windsor, who said that one could not be too rich or too thin. I do not mind being a little too rich, but she put on the map the idea that, if one wants to be successful and smart and to make one's way in the world

and attract good-looking men, such as we have in the Chamber today, one must be extraordinarily pencil slim to the point that, ultimately, it is dangerous to one's health.
We must pay serious attention to this matter. I applaud the plea by Dr. Tom Sanders for more common sense about eating habits. He said that we should bring to an end the soothsayers of slimming pills and magic potions and return to a sensible approach to our lives.
I am sorry that I did not have a chance to meet the Diet Breakers organisation. From what I have heard and read, it sounds as though it is doing excellent work in breaking a myth. That myth has built a billion pound industry in this country alone. In America, which is the founder of many of our cultural developments, it is a $50 billion industry. That is an export to this country which I am happy to send back.
The Bill wisely does not try to tackle too much. If one goes for a limited area, one has a chance of getting it into operation. I congratulate the hon. Lady on suggesting that we should bring a little rationality into our lives and ensure that people understand the risks involved. I agree that risks must be properly advertised so that people understand that rapid weight loss can be dangerous to their health. Likewise, any book, recording or video that is promoted on that subject must carry a health warning, as customers should know not only the benefits but the risks. The customer is entitled to know the timetable of those diets. They appear to be never-ending.
The customer also needs to know the charges. If there is one industry in which an enormous scam is going on, it is the diet industry which is making a fortune having promoted itself through a host of media.
The Daily Mirror conducted some research about the clinics that promote those different drugs and diets. It sent out some researchers—I have to say, anonymously—to investigate what was on offer. The Daily Mirror described how a researcher, Kate,
visited … the Kings Private Clinic in Paddington Street … she was charged £25 and given a six-week supply of ionamin. She wasn't told that the drug can cause nervousness, nausea and insomnia.
That is highly dangerous.
At Dietmania in London's Harley Street, she was given a three-week supply of ionamin for £50 and told not to worry about side-effects.
Another researcher, Sue, visited the Swiss Cottage DIET Clinic in North London, where they gave her a one-week supply of duromine for £13, with a limited explanation of the side-effects.
At the Medical DIET Centre in Harley Street she was not given any drugs but was charged £50 for a consultation and single sheet of paper"—
talk about an easy way to make money.
The terrifying thing is that, as the Consumers Association, which has investigated the industry very carefully, says,
Anyone can set up a clinic. And although you need to be registered to buy the drugs and prescribe them … there is concern that
there are clinic doctors operating in the field who are not registered.
We must be sure that patients and people understand the harmful effects of those appetite suppressants, the diuretics and thyroid hormones. Some people definitely must not take those potions, especially people with heart diseases, high blood pressure, asthma, epilepsy or glaucoma and those who are pregnant.
All those are serious warnings that the industry has spun out of control. We should listen carefully to people who have studied the industry and who utter health warnings of their own. For instance, I draw the attention of the House to the words of Peter Bazalgette, the executive producer of the BBC's "Food and Drink" programme, who has studied the matter for a long time. He says:
It's heartening to see scientific research mustered to join the attack on our appalling 'dieting' mania. The triple tyrannies of the diet, fashion and health industries have conspired to give us a wholly misleading idea of what a healthy weight is. In fact, we now know that the plump live longer than the very thin.
There is hope for us all.
I refer again to Professor Tom Sanders, because I think that he has managed to strike the key note on the topic. He is the professor of nutrition and dietetics at King's college, London. He said on one occasion:
The health risks of obesity are often exaggerated compared with other lifestyle aspects such as smoking and drinking. It does increase the risk of diabetes and arthritis. But the health risks of plumpness are negligible: it may even offer advantages to women. The evidence against weight cycling isn't sufficiently compelling to deter the very obese or people with metabolic conditions such as diabetes from controlling their weight.
As time is getting short, I simply want to place on record the support that I give to the hon. Member for Halifax.
I have noticed the way in which our culture has spread dieting mania throughout the country, especially among the young. There is barely a teenage girl who has not said to me, "I am dieting." I have a lovely daughter of my own, aged 19. She watches her weight, but I would be extremely angry with her if I found her going down that obsessive road. It led one or two of her friends to suffer from anorexia, which is the curse of the modern age and, in a sense, of prosperity. One would never find people of the third world opting to diet in such an obsessive and extraordinary way.
We need to enhance education about healthy eating and healthy living habits. It is a curious paradox that today's teenagers are far larger than their parents. They are all giants. One need only visit any university to see that they are bigger people than those in older generations. That is why they should not try to judge their ideal weight according to standards set in the past. They all weigh in at a bigger, healthier weight than their predecessors. That is all the more reason why we should tell them to accept that weight and be proud of that. It will guarantee that they have healthy lives unless they wreck them by falling for the media hype of the diet industry, which, frankly, has conned thousands and thousands of women to profit the pockets of those who run that industry without offering any benefit to others.
I have one word of advice. Let us go back common sense. I believe in moderation, but a little bit of what you fancy does you good.

Mr. Jacques Arnold: I came to the House this morning to support the Proceeds of Crime Bill. I am also interested in a number of other Bills before the House, should we discuss them today. When I noticed from the Order Paper that the second Bill set down for

consideration was the Regulation of Diet Industry Bill, I saw red, because anything that starts with the word "regulation" has that effect on me.
When I got a copy of the Bill, which was introduced by the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon), I noticed that it was sponsored by a further 11 hon. Members, all of whom could be described as luminaries of the trendy left. I therefore began to smell an appalling rat.
When I looked at the names of the 11 sponsors, two things came to mind: first, they are all enthusiasts for the description of being politically correct and, secondly, not a single one of them is in the Chamber now to support the Bill. When I looked down the list of sponsors, I also thought that some of them were structurally challenged, but you would rule me out of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if I said who I meant, which would, indeed, be ungallant.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Halifax, however, because her speech was an extremely useful opportunity to air the subject of slimming and the dangers that can arise in far too many circumstances. In that sense, the debate is useful.
I approached the debate with some trepidation, because I have just come from the Members' Dining Room, having had a good lunch. I thought that I could get into immense trouble if I spoke, particularly when the menu in the Dining Room offers an array of hefty puddings, including syrup pudding, coconut sponge, bread and butter pudding, jam roll and chocolate sponge. A diet of such puddings would almost have the diametrically opposite effect of the general meaning of that word on those who consumed them.
I agree with the hon. Member for Halifax that it is far better to rely on fresh vegetables, salads, fruits, good red meat, good healthy eating and a lot of exercise. The House will not be surprised to learn that, with my French name, I adopt that approach.
I have considered the Bill in detail and I should like to draw the attention of the House to a number of its clauses and subsections. Clause 2(1)(a) requires that any person in the diet industry should
ensure that at any premises where he carries on his business a notice is prominently displayed stating that rapid loss of weight is dangerous to health".
That is an extremely broad generalisation, because in a number of cases—only medically qualified people could state it case by case—it may be beneficial to lose a lot of weight. It would be rather dangerous to put up such broad-brush notices as that suggested by the subsection.
Clause 2(1)(b) also requires that a person engaged in the diet industry should
cause any book, recording or video work which he produces to carry a notice stating that permanent loss of weight is unlikely and cannot be guaranteed".
That is a broad statement, which could not be said to be the case. It is wrong to produce a propaganda statement in such a generalised form.
After all, far too often a certain product is advertised on our television screens—time and again, it is thrust down the throats of the British public. It is presented by a young salesman with a winsome smile and using warm words. He even comes from a Tory family. The product he sells is very dubious. It includes advertising slogans such as being tough on crime and the causes of crime and other similar soundbites. Should we necessarily attach to the product the description that that is unlikely and cannot


be guaranteed? With that product, I would certainly say that because of the Labour party's record over the last few decades. Therefore, we must be careful about obliging people to put a description on a particular product.
Clause 2(1)(c) requires that other notices should be displayed, for example, to outline clearly
the benefits and risks of loss of weight
or to provide
an estimated or actual timetable for any diet which he"—
the practitioner—
proposes that the customer should follow".
Surely much of that is common sense, so I wonder whether it should be included in a notice, a booklet or in straight medical advice, which we receive from our doctors if we are worried.
It is important that the House ensures that a Bill such as this draws a careful distinction between the overwhelming majority of responsible doctors and the minority of quack doctors. We must not throw out the baby with the bath water by tarring good, responsible doctors—of whom there is a vast number—with the same brush as those quack doctors who are guilty of disgraceful and unscrupulous behaviour.
Quack doctors are nothing new; we need only go back through the centuries to see the many quack remedies which existed and which, in fact, are an absolute disgrace. Queen Elizabeth I covered her face with a white material that had a lead base because it was deemed to make her beautiful. All the lead did was to corrode the body. Many of the ancient quack remedies were stuffed with lead components that had a disastrous corrosive effect. It was all done in the interests of so-called good appearance.
We do not have to go back through many decades to recall women squeezing themselves into corsets to produce a wasp waist, with all the damage that that did to internal organs. The wish to look good can be extremely dangerous, but to produce broad generalisations that will sweep up the good doctors as well as the quack doctors, to whom we are all opposed, is a bad idea.
The hon. Member for Halifax introduced a ten-minute Bill last year in which she gave examples of products. She said that for one cream it was claimed that
all one has to do is to lie on one's back, rub the tummy and the fat will disappear."—[Official Report, 29 June 1994; Vol. 245, c. 816–17.]
She advised people not to try it as it did not work. That is likely to be true, because it seems to be far too easy. Some of the more generously proportioned hon. Members would immediately resort to it if it were that easy. We come back to the old adages such as, "There's one born every day" and "A fool and his money are soon parted".
We must proceed with caution on the Bill. After all, we already have remedies against quack medicines. A good example of that was given recently when the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, West (Mr. Sackville), proposed a ban on a number of products that make use of amphetamines as slimming aids. My hon. Friend is operating under section 62 of the Medicines Act 1968. His proposal is subject to consultation, but he has rightly drawn on the advice of highly qualified medical practitioners. He is exercising an Act that has already been passed by the House and that deals with products that are clearly demonstrably harmful.
As we go through the Bill, we immediately identify a considerable number of points on which we should act exceedingly cautiously. My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) referred to her concern about her daughter having an obsession with slimming. I have a similar concern with my own daughters, but, so far, they seem to have exercised a remarkable amount of common sense.
We need common sense. We need to eat less and to do more exercise. A number of hon. Members can be seen teetering to and fro around the courtyard on their bicycles. How much better it would be if so many more of us in the population did likewise. We need to rely on legislation that provides conditions by which we can obtain the necessary ban on individual products.
If I were to give any advice to the House, I would say that if the Bill receives a Second Reading today after sufficient consideration by hon. Members, it will need careful consideration in Committee.

Ms Tessa Jowell: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) on her speech, on her extraordinary success in raising public concern about the issue, and on securing the debate today. The measure is remarkably practical. It seeks to impose some minimal standards of responsibility on an industry that, in part, flagrantly exploits the anxieties of vulnerable people.
The Bill's provisions cannot simply be parodied as busybody interference. As the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) reminded us, it is extremely important to safeguard the Bill's proposals against misrepresentation. The Bill does not propose a new regulator—no Off-Fat is proposed—or any cumbersome bureaucracy. No one reading this short Bill could possibly argue that its propositions are unreasonable. On the contrary, its proposals are so obviously fair and sensible that the diet industry will have to demonstrate why on earth it is not prepared to adopt the proposed practices. An industry it certainly is, and one which grows fat on stimulating millions of fit and healthy people into believing that there is something wrong with the way that they are.
People come in all shapes and sizes, but the slimming industry wants to turn us all into Barbie dolls. Its targets, of course, are overwhelmingly women—and increasingly, young women. Estimates suggest that, at any time, about 50 per cent. of women are on a diet of some sort. As the incidence of unhealthy weight is about 16 per cent. of the population, it follows that about a third of all women are being induced to diet for no good reason. In doing so, they put about £1 billion a year into the pockets of the diet industry.
Many young girls are tortured by anxiety about their weight anyway. To some extent, that is a normal part of adolescence and growing up. But instead of encouraging girls to love their bodies, whatever their shape or size, the diet industry perniciously feeds on those anxieties, occasionally with tragic results. At present, 125,000 women suffer from bulimia, 70,000 suffer from anorexia nervosa, and the number is doubling every decade. Great Ormond Street hospital has seen a fourfold increase in the number of children treated at its eating disorder clinic.
There are two main strands of opposition to the Bill. The first is that we already have all the regulation that we need, primarily in the form of the Advertising Standards Authority. The other is that the diet industry is performing a valuable public service in tackling a plague of obesity, with its attendant health risks. Neither of those claims stands up. The Advertising Standards Authority monitors only advertisements, whereas the Bill refers to the conduct and practice of so-called dieting experts at their slimming centres and clinics. Nor could that authority deal with the numerous magazines whose editorial content is an endless assault on the normal shape of normal people.
Obesity certainly exists, but it is not cured by miracle diets. On the contrary, the evidence is that the preoccupation with unnatural slimness is itself the cause of a great deal of physical as well as psychological illness. It cannot be a coincidence that the number of people reported to have a serious eating disorder has grown so rapidly over the past 20 years. Of course, not everyone who starts dieting ends up with an eating disorder, but everyone with an eating disorder started by dieting.
There is all the difference in the world between public health policies which promote healthy eating and a diet industry which promotes an obsession with dieting. Yesterday I bought a batch of magazines from the corner newsagent, which were on sale to all and sundry. They promise, "You can be 14 lb lighter in four weeks" or "Lose a stone in a month" and offer "50 top tips for the new you". What can possibly be wrong with requiring the sellers of this stuff to warn readers of the risks attendant on such promises?
The diet industry thrives on its failure. American figures show that 97 per cent. of the people who diet put any lost weight back on and probably lose self-esteem in the process. The industry spends 13 per cent. of sales revenue on advertising, endlessly stimulating demand for a product that seldom works.
The Minister's announcement that the prescription of amphetamines for slimming is to be banned is very welcome, as is the promise of stiffer penalties for doctors who breach the rule. Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States have stricter regimes for regulation than we do.
There is clearly a strong measure of cross-party support for the Bill and a belief that action must be taken. I hope that, as an expression of that determination, the House will give this practical and important Bill a Second Reading.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Tom Sackville): I congratulate the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) on introducing this important Bill, which certainly merits discussion.
I welcome something that we seldom hear from the hon. Lady, namely her praise for the Government's initiative on amphetamines. She also praised many parts of the media, which is something she also does but rarely. She included the Bolton Evening News, my excellent local newspaper, which did an enormous amount of work on this subject some months ago and came up with numerous

examples of people who had been damaged by slimming mania and specifically by amphetamine or amphetamine-like substances.
The Government are concerned that industry, including that which claims to aid weight loss, is properly regulated. We are also concerned to ensure that consumers are not misled by inaccurate or misleading claims about products, that they have sufficient information to make an informed choice and that the products themselves are safe. Our philosophy is therefore very much in tune with the good intentions of the Bill in as much as both seek to protect the public.
I understand very well the concerns that have prompted the Bill, but I am confident that when I have explained the broader picture surrounding the whole issue hon. Members will question the necessity of the Bill's provisions.
Obesity among men and women is a serious and growing problem in this country. People's personal appearance is a matter for them, of course, and the Government would not seek to influence such choices, but when people's personal weight becomes a risk to their health more generally it becomes a matter of concern to the national health service. Obesity contributes to raised plasma cholesterol and raised blood pressure and is a risk factor for both coronary heart disease and stroke—two major causes of premature death in the UK—as well as for diabetes, gall-stones, as the hon. Member for Halifax mentioned, arthritis and a number of other less well known conditions.
For that reason, the problem of rising obesity as it is clinically defined has to be addressed, which is why a target for reducing the prevalence was included in the coronary heart disease and stoke section of the White Paper, "The Health of the Nation". At the time those targets were set, the figures showed that 8 per cent. of men and 12 per cent. of women were obese. The latest position, portrayed by the recent report from the Health Survey for England, showed that those figures have increased to 13 per cent. for men and 16 per cent. for women. Regardless of whether the two sets of figures are exactly comparable, they show a fairly alarming increase.
Perhaps it would be helpful at this stage if I defined exactly what we mean by obese, which was touched on by the hon. Member for Dulwich (Ms Jowell). It is a matter of having a body mass index of greater than 30. If I may explain further, body mass index is calculated by dividing an individual's weight, expressed in kilograms, by the square of his or her weight in metres.

Mr. Timothy Wood: Height in metres.

Mr. Sackville: I am so sorry. I should have said height in metres. It was worth having a Whip within earshot.
Just to clarify matters for hon. Members who do not understand those European terms, obesity would therefore mean a woman of 5 ft 6 in having a weight of more then 13 stone or a man of 6 ft having a weight of more than 15½ stone. I will not try to define what my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) described as structurally challenged, but perhaps he will give us his own definition of what he may have meant.

Mr. Jacques Arnold: I felt that it would be excessively cruel to ask which of the sponsors of the Bill could be referred to as fat, and "structurally challenged" seemed fashionably correct on the Labour Benches.

Mr. Sackville: Well, now we know.
It is important to make the distinction between the term clinical obesity and people whom the Bill seeks to protect—victims who believe that they are overweight when very often they are not at all. I have already explained that there are good medical and health reasons for concern about being overweight. I should also point that the problem of increasing obesity is not confined to this country but is prevalent throughout the developed world. It is a serious problem with no easy solutions and for those reasons, as I have already mentioned, we must address it.
The nutrition task force was created to devise a strategy for achieving the diet and nutrition targets in "The Health of the Nation" White Paper, which included a target for obesity. It was proposed that, in the first instance, attention should be particularly directed towards the prevention of obesity. As overweight and obesity result from taking in more energy from food than that expended on physical activity, exercise is required to address the problem. The nutrition task force also agreed that action to achieve the targets should be considered jointly with the physical activity task force.
People could be forgiven for thinking that if the problem is caused by eating more than one needs for daily activity, the solution is simple—to eat less and to be active. We know, however, that it is not so easy as it sounds. One of the main contentions behind the Bill is that diets, in the sense of diets for weight loss, do not always work. Many diets help people to lose weight, but the problem lies in keeping the weight off in the long term. That is why the two task forces decided on a preventive approach both to help to prevent the population as a whole from getting fatter and to target help at those groups of the population most at risk from obesity.
As a first step, a symposium of experts was convened last year. Those attending were asked to suggest courses of action to prevent further rises in levels of obesity. The symposium considered trends in obesity in the United Kingdom, the factors controlling energy imbalance and the potential contribution that might be made by local authorities, schools, industry, the NHS and everyone else concerned. Consideration is currently being given to the future course of action to be taken within the task forces for improving dietary habits, together with the strategy of the task force on physical activity aimed at increasing levels of physical activity. One important point that we have identified is the need for more research into long-term solutions.
To turn to the central matter of the Bill, we must always make the important distinction between medically desirable weight, which forms the basis of Government advice, and cosmetically desirable weight. What is commonly portrayed as being cosmetically desirable is often thinner than what would be considered medically desirable. It is also true that the long-term efficacy of relatively short-term proprietary slimming products has rarely been demonstrated. Just as it is not healthy to be overweight, it is not healthy to be underweight. By not eating enough for the body's needs and becoming

underweight, people may not be getting all the nutrients that they need from their food and they run the risk of suffering ill health as a result.
I agree with everything that the hon. Member for Halifax said about the pernicious influence of the fashion industry, especially through magazines and television. Obsession with weight has been a problem at various times in history, but it is probably much more of a problem in the age of the mass media, with the power of television and the power of attractive and cleverly presented magazines. I remember reading in the press of a recent survey which said that a certain percentage—it may have been 60 per cent.—of women reading a well-known mass weekly magazine became severely stressed after three minutes of looking at the various role models in front of them. Whether or not that is an exaggeration, there is no doubt that there is a powerful wave coming all the time, particularly at women, telling people that they need to be thinner. We must consider such attitudes dangerous.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) mentioned putting an end to all this and to the various quack medicines and products. I am not sure that we shall be able to put an end to them. We are really asking people to change their attitudes to themselves. We are asking for a complete alteration in the way in which people look at themselves, in their relationships with others and in their self-esteem. That is a very tall order and I am afraid that it is a problem much wider than the provisions in the Bill.
It makes sense, therefore, for people to try to be sensible and to maintain a healthy weight in relation to their height. The best way to do that is simply by eating a healthier diet and by participating in some form of regular exercise. That message form the cornerstone of Government advice on the issue. However, those ideas, especially those concerning diet and exercise, are not welcome to a large part of the population, and although enormous activity has been generated over the past two or three years by our White Paper, "The Health of the Nation", in the end we still need an enormous shift in national attitudes to get people to realise that their health and how they look after their bodies is to some extent their own responsibility.
Even in terms of the Bill there needs to be a great change in the way in which people view themselves and their weight. The Bill's use of the term "diet" suggests that it should be interpreted as a food regimen for weight loss, but diet should really be considered as involving the way in which we eat in everyday life. Diet is not something that we go on or off, but a vital part of our whole lives.
It rather worries me that the Bill appears to be based on the premise that a large proportion of the people professionally involved in slimming, other than medically qualified practitioners, are various sorts of charlatan. Although we know that many people active in the slimming industry could be described in that way, we must be careful to distinguish between good and bad advice. The activities of many professionals well qualified to advise individuals on diet and nutrition would undoubtedly be restricted. Dieticians and nutritionists are obvious examples, but there are others who play a vital role—

Mrs. Mahon: May I point out to the Minister that the dieticians and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain support the Bill? Most of the professionals involved with dieting support it.

Mr. Sackville: I appreciate and welcome that fact in terms of the spirit of the Bill, but we must be careful when we talk about the slimming industry. I have had some experience of that this week following an announcement that I made about amphetamines.
We must be careful not to lump everybody into the same pot. Dieticians, nutritionists and others with a role to play in assisting people with dietary matters—such as pharmacists, nurses, midwives, health visitors, dentists, practitioners of other profession allied to medicine, or health promotion specialists—are all active in giving people the right advice about diet and exercise, and sometimes about weight loss. In order to help to achieve "The Health of the Nation" targets a project team from the nutrition task force has drawn up a core curriculum in nutrition for the education of health professionals, which was published last year.
The Bill does not refer to the activities of a group of people who, as many hon. Members have said, are especially culpable—doctors who set up private slimming clinics so that they can prescribe addictive amphetamine-type products to assist with weight loss. As the House knows, I have announced that we are considering a ban on amphetamine-type slimming pills under section 62 of the Medicines Act 1968, and intend to consult on the topic. We are considering action because we know that many qualified practitioners are prescribing inappropriately, although legally, slimming pills which were not designed for people who are, or who believe themselves to be, slightly overweight. The pills contain substances licensed for various purposes, including treating people with moderate or severe obesity, as defined earlier in my speech. In terms of the Bill and also the proposals which I announced this week, we must make sure that there is a distinction between people who are properly using certain substances to help people with a real clinical problem, and those people who are using it to make money and prescribing entirely inappropriately.
The Bill proposes that any book, recording or video produced would need to state that permanent weight loss is unlikely and cannot be guaranteed. I am sure that hon. Members will not need me to describe the regulatory machinery that such a provision would entail. The Act resulting from any such Bill would also oblige anyone giving advice to provide—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): Order.

It being half-past Two o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed on Friday 28 April.

Remaining Private Members' Bills

BREAST CANCER (NATIONAL PLAN) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 28 April.

TRANSPORT OF ANIMALS FOR SLAUGHTER BILL

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Second Reading [20 January].

Hon. Members: Object.

Debate to be resumed on Friday 21 April.

ENERGY SAVING MATERIALS (RATE OF VALUE ADDED TAX) BILL

Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Second Reading [20 January].

Hon. Members: Object.

Debate to be resumed on Friday 21 April.

PRISONERS (RETURN TO CUSTODY) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 21 April.

LAND REGISTERS (SCOTLAND) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 21 April.

NATURAL DISASTERS (SCOTLAND) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 21 April.

CIVIL RIGHTS (DISABLED PERSONS) (SCOTLAND) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Hon. Members: Object.

Second Reading deferred till Friday 21 April.

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE (AMENDMENT) BILL

Read a Second time.

Motion made and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills),

That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Austin-Walker.]

Question agreed to.

Committee on Friday 21 April.

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS

Ordered,
That Mr. John Horam be discharged from the Committee of Public Accounts and Mr. Peter Thurnham be added to the Committee.—[Mr. Wood.]

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That, at the sitting on Tuesday 4th April, the Speaker shall put the Question on the Motion in the name of Mr. Tony Blair relating to the Infant Formula and Follow-on Formula Regulations 1995 not later than one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings thereon; and the said Motion may be entered upon and proceeded with, though opposed, after Ten o'clock.—[Mr. Wood.]

Pesticides

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Wood.]

Mr. Andrew Mackinlay: This debate relates to the dangers to health caused by the use of lindane, but it also concerns other pesticides in the organochloride and organophosphorus groups which are increasingly used in the home, agriculture and manufacturing. One example to which I shall refer at a later stage is permethrin, which was sprayed on 8 October 1991 in the Grays benefit office where my constituent Cassy Stanton worked. She was in the early stages of pregnancy. I shall return to her case in a moment.
As well as Cassy Stanton coming to my surgery, I was prompted to raise the issue of these chemicals by articles in the journal of the agricultural workers section of the Transport and General Workers Union, of which I am a sponsored Member of the House. I was also prompted by the effective and legitimate lobby by the Greenetwork, and influenced by a number of broadcasts, including Central Television's "Earth Dwellers Guide" which was presented by Philip Tibbenham on 21 August 1993, Channel 4's powerful "Dispatches" programme on 30 November 1994 and a number of small, but not unimportant, items broadcast on "Farming Today". These broadcasts, together with the contents of other programmes, have prompted me to raise the issue of lindane and similar pesticides in the House.
Since my debate appeared on the Order Paper, it has surprised but reassured me to realise that many hon. Members are worried about the matter. Many hon. Members from both sides of the House have approached me in the past few days. My hon. Friends the Members for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Gunnell), for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), for Bristol, East (Ms Corston) and for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) would have been here for the debate, but for overriding pressing commitments in their constituencies.
It is also significant that the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Carlile) has recently asked questions from the Liberal Benches about the matter. Last, but by no means least, the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Sir R. Body) has consistently and vigorously drawn attention to his anxieties about the dangers arising from the widespread use of agricultural pesticides over a number of years.
My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, South-West (Mr. Jones) approached me last night and drew to my attention the fact that he had an Adjournment debate on the use of lindane on 28 February 1989. It followed the tabling of early-day motion 143, signed by 117 hon. Members. In that debate he was supported by the hon. Member for Norfolk, North-West (Mr. Bellingham) and my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Mr. Lofthouse). Significantly, on that occasion a reply was given by the Under-Secretary of State for Employment. I raise that point because responsibility for and interest in lindane ranges across Departments. In the past few days I have tabled questions to the Departments of Employment and of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Department for Education and the Department of the Environment. Arguably, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster also


has responsibility for lindane when he has his science hat on. That is important in view of my desire to persuade the Minister that the Government have not got to grips with properly examining in a range of programmes the extent of and dangers implicit in the use of Lindane and comparable chemicals.
Lindane is a potent insecticide and a dangerous organochloride. It is in the same family as DDT and has similar properties in as much as it is absorbed and accumulates in body fat and inevitably gets into the food chain. Such chemicals do not easily break down in the body. They are highly persistent.
As members of the public and as workers, we encounter Lindane in a number of forms. It can he odourless and colourless. It can be a solid, a white powder, a liquid or in the smoke-bomb fumigator variety. It is used in soil treatment against insect pests. It is used in the production of animal feeds. It is widely used in sugar beet production areas.
Lindane or similar chemicals are used in sheep dips, and workers are involved in what is described as bucket chemistry because they have to mix their own chemicals. The use which particularly caused me anxiety on watching the broadcast was in timber protection. Often, lofts are sprayed with lindane as a condition of mortgages. I point that out to the Minister and ask him to pause and consider that many of us simply do not know whether we are exposed to the chemical. We go into pubs, schools, homes or any other variety of buildings which might have been sprayed recently with lindane or comparable chemicals. We would not know that we were so exposed.
We absorb lindane by breathing the gas and vapours. It goes straight into the lungs and into the bloodstream. Fine dust can follow the same route. Larger particles are trapped in the nasal passages or the mucus escalator of the bronchial tubes. It is not necessary to have direct contact with the chemical. It can be swallowed because food and water can be contaminated directly by exposure to lindane. Lindane can be absorbed into the air. It mixes with food and water.
Lindane can also be absorbed by touching the product. I am particularly concerned about unskilled and untrained workers who have to handle the product in the timber industry or in the application of the pesticide to timbers in lofts.
One amazing fact is that, under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, the use of lindane in lofts where bats might reside is forbidden, because it might kill them, yet there is no similar embargo on its use where human beings congregate.
Lindane accumulates in body fat and can stay there a long time after exposure. While I acknowledge that, as is the case with many diseases, some people are more susceptible or sensitive to the effects of chemicals than others, and that some people suffer no ill-effects, nevertheless far too many people have experienced one or more of the following disorders following exposure to lindane.
One of the most serious is aplastic anaemia, which is a form of leukaemia and is a killer. There is substantial evidence to show that lindane also causes damage to the nervous system, and provokes headaches, convulsions and loss of limb movement, as well as mental illness, anxiety,

depression, memory loss, vomiting, sore eyes, urticaria—raised red areas on the body—oedema, which is an abnormal accumulation of fluid in body tissues that causes swelling, diarrhoea, and loss of appetite. Lindane also probably contributes to anorexia and irritable bowel syndrome. It clearly aggravates respiratory diseases and can cause nasal inflammation, sores and breathing problems. Longterm tiredness, which is sometimes diagnosed as myalgic encephalomyelitis, is also attributed to lindane exposure. The final disease on that list is epilepsy.
The constituent to whom I referred earlier subsequently gave birth to a child who suffers from CHARGE, which is a particularly sad and painful handicap. In such children, only part of the retina functions and in some cases, there are problems with the iris. The children also suffer from heart defects and blockage of the nasal passages due to bone material or a membrane and their growth is retarded. In male infants, the genitals are not properly formed and do not develop. They also suffer from ear abnormalities.
The Department of Health has been furnished with a considerable body of evidence and I believe that it shows that CHARGE is, at least in part, caused by the exposure of the mother between 35 and 45 days from conception to lindane or other chemicals of the same family, such as permethrin.
Lindane has been banned or is severely restricted in some countries, including New Zealand, Sweden and Finland. Forty years ago, doctors in the United States drew attention to the association of lindane with the bone marrow disease aplastic anaemia, in which the bone marrow stops producing blood cells that fight infection and the platelets that stop bleeding. As I said, that can be a fatal condition. Subsequently, the United States, which has vigorous environmental laws and agencies, banned the use of lindane as a wood preservative and pesticide for domestic use.
The hon. Member for Holland with Boston has also drawn attention to the link between breast cancer and lindane and I think that the evidence is compelling. Sixty-five per cent. of the milk that we buy contains small quantities of lindane and it has even shown up in human breast milk. British and American scientists now point to lindane as a factor in the high incidence of breast cancer in the United Kingdom. When lindane was banned in Israel in 1978 it was reported that the death rate from breast cancer among women under 35 fell by a third. I do not believe that that is a coincidence.
In Britain, however, we are told by the various agencies—and hitherto by Ministers—that the amount of lindane in our food is within acceptable safety guidelines. Experts who were interviewed for the "Dispatches" programme believe that even the minutest amounts of lindane are unsafe in the human body and that, ingested over long periods, the pesticide has a cumulative and extremely damaging effect on the body. Part of that programme focused on the county of Lincolnshire, which includes the constituency of the hon. Member for Holland with Boston and has one of the highest rates of the disease in the country. It is also an area where lindane is widely used for sugar beet production, which dominates that county.
On wood treatment—which was the subject of the earlier Adjournment debate in 1989—the Minister must bear in mind the fact that many contractors do not advise or counsel their customers to vacate treated rooms for up to 48 hours.


That is the industry's guideline on the appropriate period for a room treated with lindane to be in quarantine. I think that 48 hours is woefully inadequate, but ample evidence shows that, for a variety of reasons, be they selfish and commercial or sheer ignorance, contractors do not advise their customers about the prudence of vacating rooms treated with the product even for that period.
The London Hazard Centre believes that rooms should be vacated for not days but weeks, and the Building Research Establishment has shown that lindane can build up in the air for a month or more after treatment. Many public and commercial buildings, to which we are all exposed, are treated, but no warnings are given about whether we should enter. Clearly, pregnant women are particularly, although not exclusively, vulnerable and, where lindane has been applied or sprayed, warnings should be given by regulation. The Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 1988 are being flouted and ignored on a widespread scale. Many contractors, employers and customers are not advised of the hazards and risks, or the need for protective clothing when lindane is being applied.
The veterinary medicine directorate and the pesticides safety directorate, which are supposed to advise and counsel the Government, are letting us down. I do not doubt the Government's good will in this matter. However, they should pause, take a step back and set up an inquiry that is independent of their existing advisers. Although those two directorates are not puppets of Government, they have been extremely weak, if not craven, inasmuch as they probably must follow the wider Government policy of not sending "the wrong signals to industry". The problem is that they are, to a large extent, both licensing and surveillance authorities so they have a vested interest in not proving that they have previously made a mistake in authorising licensing of an unsafe product.
The United Kingdom does not appear to have a duty of care with regard to regulations covering pharmaceutical and chemical products, as exists under common and civil law. We have no freedom of information Act, so companies can claim commercial confidentiality and refuse to release their research data. That is unacceptable. We need full disclosure of research data from producers and marketers of such products. Another problem is inappropriate and inadequately applied regulations. Testing by the producers of those products provides for safety clearance to start at the point of a product first being sold. Surveillance and evaluation frequently stop thereafter, whereas monitoring and examination should continue throughout the period of public use.
Extensive public concern exists about lindane and similar chemicals used in agriculture, manufacturing and the home. People have no confidence in the existing regulatory procedure. Public confidence is extremely important, so I hope that the Minister will make a name for himself and make one of the briefest speeches in an Adjournment debate by simply saying that he will examine not only the matter that I have raised but the evidence from all interested parties and individuals. He should examine evidence particularly from those who, although they may have suffered illness or even death, are not included in the statistics because many producers and manufacturers of those products have settled with them out of court. As a consequence of those settlements, cases of death and serious illness are not being fully examined or reported to Government.
A line should be drawn, and the Government should give some expedition to independent re-examination of the matter.
I cannot help feeling and anticipating, although I hope that it will not be the case, that the Minister will use more or less the same brief as his colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Employment, the hon. Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls), used in 1989. If he does, may I draw attention to the fact that on that occasion the Employment Under-Secretary said:
Discussions about
those chemicals
are taking place within the European Community, and the Government"—
that is the United Kingdom Government—
have proposed across the board controls on the use of wood preservatives throughout the European Community."—[Official Report, 28 February 1989; Vol. 148, c. 258.]
What has happened to that initiative? Years have passed, and now is the time for a line to be drawn. Now is the time for the Minister to make a name for himself in Brussels, and to say that the United Kingdom will not tolerate this any longer. It is time for him to say that we shall severely restrict the use of lindane and comparable chemicals and ban its use in the home, as have Finland and Sweden.
This is not another "food scare". It is not a party issue, as I have demonstrated. It is a matter that causes widespread anxiety throughout the communities in the United Kingdom. I should like the Minister to respond accordingly.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Tom Sackville): I congratulate the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay) on obtaining the debate, and on his courageous attempt to spell out ME in full. After two and a half years, I continue to have difficulty.
The hon. Member for Thurrock is right that there is widespread anxiety about pesticides and about many medicines and other substances, but I have to tell him one or two things in opening.
First, we have probably the best regulatory system in the world. When the hon. Gentleman says that there is no confidence in it, I reply that, if there is no confidence in the system, it is because certain people who have an interest in shaking confidence in it, through often ill-researched and fairly irresponsible television programmes and so on, have gone out of their way to do so. The members of the committees that regulate medicines, pesticides and similar matters include some of the leading experts in the world, with enormous international and national reputations to maintain. I defy the hon. Gentleman to give me evidence that there is any covering up of facts.
Secondly, if some of the material that I shall give the hon. Gentleman today is the same as that which has been used before, it is because the facts have not changed. I can only state the facts as we understand them.
Lindane, sometimes known as gamma HCH, is an organochlorine pesticide, as the hon. Gentleman knows, which has been used to treat animals with external parasites. It continues to have an important role in killing pests on crops and treating wood to prevent pest infestation.
The media have stated, and it has been stated elsewhere, that in some countries lindane has been banned. I understand that it has even been claimed that the United Kingdom is the only country that continues to use it. That is absolutely not so. Figures from every country in the world are not available, but in most developed countries, including the UK, lindane continues to be accepted for limited use, as an agricultural pesticide and for wood treatment.
Lindane has been withdrawn from use as a pesticide in seven countries—Indonesia, Kuwait, Morocco, New Zealand and St. Lucia and two European countries, Sweden and Finland. The House will note that the list does not include Israel. That is because lindane continues to be accepted for use there, and the high levels of lindane reported to be found in Israeli food were due to its use as a cattle louse treatment whereby it was directly applied to the cattle. That use has, indeed, ceased.
Such use is not permitted in the United Kingdom. The use of lindane as a veterinary medicine was licensed under the Medicines Act 1968 by Ministers acting on the advice of the Veterinary Products Committee. Licences for sheep dips were revoked in 1984, and the last licence for other veterinary uses lapsed in 1991.
In this country, the advertisement, sale, supply, storage, and use of pesticides is subject to the Control of Pesticides Regulations 1986. Ministers approve pesticides under those regulations and those approvals set out the crops on which the pesticide may be used and the conditions of use. The statutory conditions of use are displayed on the label on the pesticide packaging. The agricultural inspectorate of the Health and Safety Executive monitors the application of those regulations and can prosecute those who fail to comply. The penalty on conviction in a magistrates court is a fine of up to £5,000 or an unlimited fine on conviction in a Crown court.
Further control is exercised through the Pesticides (Maximum Residue Levels in Crops, Food and Feeding Stuffs) Regulations 1994. Anyone putting into circulation any product listed in the regulations which contains pesticide residues above the limits specified in those regulations can, on conviction, be fined on the same basis as the fines set for a conviction under the control of pesticides regulations. Both those controls are intended to protect the health of people using pesticides or who are exposed to them in any other way.
In the United Kingdom, the Government are advised on pesticide approvals and revocations by the Advisory Committee on Pesticides, a statutory body consisting of independent medical and scientific experts representing all the relevant specialisms related to human toxicology, environmental safety, agricultural, horticultural and other uses of pesticides. They have the necessary qualifications and experience to understand the research and interpret its findings on the safety and efficacy of pesticide use. Ministers must take the advice of that committee before they approve or revoke the use of any pesticide. I assure the House that the Government pay careful attention to the committee's advice and have always acted on it.
Before any new pesticide is approved or when the approval for any existing pesticide is reviewed, the potential exposure of the users and people eating food that might contain residues is carefully assessed. Approval is not given if those exposures are likely to cause harmful

health effects. As well as the evidence of exposure and of food residues that companies must provide when seeking approval of their products, the Government have established a residues monitoring system under which food is regularly surveyed. Similar considerations apply before the statutory Veterinary Products Committee advises Ministers as to whether a product should be licensed.
Of course, as I have explained, lindane is no longer licensed for use in this country as a veterinary medicine. The evidence is that lindane residues in cows milk, which are primarily due to traces of lindane in their feeds, are falling. Indeed, when found, they are around the limit of detection. Such levels are well below the internationally agreed acceptable daily intake, a level that would not be expected to cause harm to health even over a lifetime of exposure.
While the effect on human health is of paramount importance when considering the approval of a product for use, other considerations must be taken into account as well. The fact that it is withdrawn in one country may have no bearing on its use in others. Countries have different pest problems, different climates and different environmental and agricultural considerations. A product appropriate for one country may simply have no use in another. Breast cancer rates alone, in countries in which lindane is no longer used, give no indication of whether or not there might be a causal relationship.
Some concern of late, mentioned in the programme "Dispatches" and elsewhere—the hon. Member also referred to it—has arisen because more women without a family history of breast cancer are developing the disease.
The Government are concerned about the high incidence of breast cancer and that is why we have established the breast screening programme and made the reduction in mortality from breast cancer a major target of our "Health of the Nation" initiative. Certainly a family history is one of the known risk factors, but there are others, for example, late childbearing, not having children, early menarche, late menopause, obesity and repeated exposure to ionising radiation. The reason for its high incidence in developed countries, however, remains unknown. There is a wide geographical variation in both incidence and mortality and the populations with the highest risk of developing breast cancer are those in western Europe and North America.
Much has been made of the high rates of breast cancer in Israel in the early 1970s and of the dramatic increase in breast cancer mortality rates from 1976 onwards. If lindane had a causal relationship with breast cancer, however, mortality rates would be expected to remain high for several years after the withdrawal of its use. That is because breast cancer takes several years to develop.
What actually happened in Israel is a rather different story. First, the so-called dramatic decrease in mortality rates for breast cancer began shortly before the drop in pesticide exposure. The Israeli researchers, Westin and Richter, noted that phenomenon. Lindane was withdrawn from use as a louse treatment in 1978. Secondly, and more tellingly, it was only the deaths from breast cancer that declined at that time, not the incidence. There is no evidence of a sharp decrease in the number of women in Israel who developed the disease; on the contrary, in the 25 to 34 age group, the relatively small number of cases


stayed much the same, but in the age group 35 to 44, there was a steady rise in breast cancer incidence in the period 1976 to 1986.
In most developed countries, including Israel, the statistics follow a familiar pattern—an increasing number of women developing this dreadful disease, but also a decrease in the number of deaths. The most likely reason for the rise in incidence and drop in death rates is the improvement in treatment and public awareness—for example, earlier detection.
I emphasis that if there were any reason to think that the use of lindane or, indeed, any other manufactured product was the cause of such a widespread and serious disease, we would have no hesitation in withdrawing it. But there are, unfortunately, only a very few cancers where we can say with any certainty that they have a particular extraneous cause.
Unfortunately, in the time available I cannot deal with all the points raised about lindane. I want to reiterate that

in this country we have an excellent system for approving pesticides and for licensing veterinary medicines. Under both systems, the Government are advised by independent statutory committees which, I have to tell the hon. Gentleman, are respected around the world as being the best. We listen to those expert committees and if they tell us that a product is likely to harm people, we do not let it get on to the market.
Lindane has been carefully considered, certain uses have been reviewed and the agricultural pesticide use is presently under review. We can rest assured—

The motion having been made after half-past Two o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned accordingly at two minutes past Three o'clock.